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This online debate started from a ZME Science article titled “Australia lobbies coal mine at climate talks”, which presented a very stereotypical position describing “how while the rest of the world was doing its best to comply with the Pari Climate Accord”, saying that “…Australian environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, lobbied for the opening of a new, grand coal mine. … and further criticized the Australian government for failing to make good its Paris climate agreements in preventing opening of this coal mine. So naturally, I commented on it,which started a flurry of blogging activity of back and forths, the last couple of them listed below. My final reply to TreeParty, my adversary on this issue, appears at the very bottom.

So the evidence from the data that YOU CITED is that the temperature of Greenland is the warmest now than it has been in at least 2000 years. That is obviously caused by the flaring of hundreds of millions of years of stored carbon in just over a century, causing GLOBAL (as opposed to local Greenland) temperatures to rise by 1 deg. C per century, a rate that is historically very rare. Other proxies for GLOBAL temperatures DO NOT show that the “Minoan Warm Period” was 1.5 deg. C. hotter than the present average temperature of the planet. So the current spike of >1 deg. C. GLOBALLY in a century is anomalous and dangerous.
Can you find and post a temperature record for the last 4000 years that is not confined to Greenland?

And where did you come up with this idea that the temperature of Greenland is the warmest now than it has been in at least 2000 years and is obviously caused by flaring of hundreds of millions of years of stored carbon in just over a century? Who said it’s obvious? and what carbon are you referring to, fossil fuels, CO2, what?

Let’s take this answer in stages.
Stage One: The graph of “Central Greenland Temperature” that you yourself linked shows that the temperature of Greenland has not been as high as it is now for just about 2000 years. That “the temperature of Greenland is the warmest now than it has been in at least 2000 years” is shown by the data that YOU LINKED! And we agree on that conclusion, because it is clearly and demonstrably true.
Stage Two: The average global temperature of the ENTIRE PLANET has increased in the last century by over 1 Deg C. That would include Greenland, by definition; even though the general rise in the average temperature of the planet will not affect every locality by the same amount. Obviously.
Stage Three: The consensus of scientists that spend every day studying climate change is that it is principally human activity (combustion of fossil fuels; deforestation; feedback effects of methane release, albedo loss, etc.) that is causing this global warming. Other possible mechanisms, and groups of mechanisms, have been considered, evaluated, and rejected, as the CHIEF driver of the

measurable global warming. The increase in atmospheric CO2, that went from 280 PPM for the entire duration of the graph you linked on Powerline, to >400 PPM and rising, at present, is what the

overwhelming consensus of climate scientists believe is causing the current global warming.
Stage Four: It is the “flaring of hundreds of millions of year of stored carbon in just over a century” that has caused the atmospheric fraction of CO2 to rise from 280 PPM for the last 800,000 years, to the current value of >400 PPM in just over a century. I SAID IT’S OBVIOUS, and I have virtually the entire community of climate science to back me up on that.
To recapitulate: There is no other scientifically defensible explanation for the observable rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet but AGW.
Cheers..

———-

TreeParty, now that I’ve had a chance to mostly rebuild my bookmarks following a disastrous Windows 10 upgrade[one can only do this after having filed a case number with Microsoft for failure of one’s operating system to upgrade to Windows 10], it’s time for me to pick-apart your comments, and unseat you from your high horse. I can assure you that the new administration of Donald Trump will give this CAGW item its proper priority, LASTon the list of major social agenda items, just what a 2015Gallup Inc. survey, indicated “Billions of dollars poured in alarmist propaganda, by politicians and vested interests in the renewables industry, and over a decade of time, might as well have been tossed down the drain. The only result of this stupendous attempt to mobilise public opinion, has been a barely measurable increase in support, amongst people who were presumably already sympathetic to the climate alarmist message – and a massive drop in support outside this magic circle of fellow travelers. “ and “Besides the recent cold weather snap, it’s possible Americans have been influenced by the Climategate scandal, which claimed to show the scientists are “concealing” data, focused on politics instead of science, and are readily admitting internally that climate change “science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.” Some of the other predictions made about the United States also did not come about, with the major one being an increase in hurricane activity. “, http://bit.ly/2gqyRGO. It was on 1 June 2017, that President Trump finally decided to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail, and that is to drop out of the Paris Climate Accord.

First, I agree I gave you the wrong link regarding Greenland’s temperature record, a mistake on my part, probably in my haste to get to school that day, I believe. Whileadmittedly going back maybe a little further than 2000 years, this graph clearly shows that Greenland has been much warmer in the past under the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) [the period which Michael Mann attempted to obliterate in his fraudulent hockey stick graph, along with the Little Ice Age (LIA)], the Roman Warming Period and highest temperature of all, the Minoan Warming Period or as shown in the fourth chart on this webpageso no, I don’t agree with you regarding the historical temperature of Greenland, as it has been much warmer in the past than today, also there is nothing unusual about this warming, again http://bit.ly/2i1lNF4. Finally, did you realize that when the ice drillers reached the bottom, 3 km, of their surveying of the Greenland ice sheet, they found a 2.7-Million-Year-Old Forested Landscape Discovered under Greenland.

You asked me “Can you find and post a temperature record for the last 4000 years that is not confined to Greenland?”. I think that found some answers, but why limit ourselves to the last 4000 years, unless you already know that climate has been hotter in past: “Contrary to Michael Mann’s now widely discredited hockey stick “science,” the Neukom et al research found the MWP was a high temperature event in South America. This team of 18 highly qualified researchers came from 7 countries; they chose the best 22 climate proxies to reconstruct a thousand+ year temperature series.“;”We show that water masses linked to North Pacific and Antarctic intermediate waters were warmer by 2.1 ± 0.4°C and 1.5 ± 0.4°C, respectively, during the middle Holocene Thermal Maximum than over the past century. Both water masses were ~0.9°C warmer during the Medieval Warm period than during the Little Ice Age and ~0.65° warmer than in recent decades. “;”For other databases it appears that variability on interannual to decadal time scales complicates a straightforward attempt to from the anthropogenic CO2 signal on the Earth’s environment. “;”Winter snow cover has been increasing in a hockey stick since the very warm winter of 1995, and is now at record levels. “”This segment (Part II) analyzes conclusions in the Marcott et al. paper in which they contend that “Global temperatures are warmer than at any time in at least 4,000 years” and “Global temperature….. has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past separate natural perturbationscentury.” A heat spike in the 1st like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years”. …

So let’s check the Marcott et al. conclusions against several of the best data sets available. For this exercise, we’ll use (1) the GISP2 oxygen isotope data of Stuiver and Grottes (1997), (2) the GISP2 paleotemperature data of Cuffy and Clow (1997) and Alley (2000), and (3) temperature reconstructions from Chinese tree rings. Among the many data sets that could be used, the GISP2 ice core data have

been selected because (1) the ice core data is based on thousands of isotope measurements that

quantitatively reflect paleo-temperatures, (2) the chronology is accurate to within about 1-3 years,

(3) even small fluctuations of ice core paleo-temperatues can be clearly and unequivocally correlated with advance and retreat of glaciers globally, confirming that the ice core data mimic global temperatures, and (4) Greenland temperatures measured over the past century match global temperature trends almost exactly, confirming that Greenland temperatures march in lock step with global temperatures. Thus, the GISP2 ice core data provides an excellent check against conclusions about global climate—it is quantitative, chronologically accurate, and representative of global climate. ,,,

The significance of this is that temperature variations in both curves are essentially the same, confirming one another. The Little Ice, Medieval Warm Period, Dark Ages Cool Period, Roman Warm Period, and other temperature peaks show up equally well in both types of curve. (TreeParty, I chose this article not only because it shows the warming peaks of the past through the Greenland ice record, but also confirmation through Chinese tree rings as a proxy. You’ll note that the article confirms the Minoan Warming Period peak temperatures as well as others)…

The Medieval Warm Period was 1.1° C warmer than the top of the core (1950) and at least four other warm periods were ~1.3 °C warmer; two other warm periods were 1.8-2.0 °C warmer; and one warm period was 2.8 °C warmer. At least a dozen periodsmore than 1°C warmer than 1950 occurred, clearly contradicting the Marcott et al. Conclusions”;”Since 1967, North American winter snow extent has been increasing, with many recent years being in the top twenty. The only reasonable explanation for this is that cold Arctic air is pushing further south into the United States during winter, causing snow to fall and remain on the ground further south than it did 50 years ago. …As always, they cool the past and warm the present to create the appearance of non-existent warming. This leaves only two realistic possibilities.

The freezing point of water has changed since 1967

US winters are getting colder, and the NCDC adjustments are complete garbage.” ;

“At first reading the message one takes from this research just published in the journal Science is that Michael Mann of Penn State University has shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Agedo in fact exist. This is in contrast to his earlier work that produced the now infamous hockey stick graph that showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so and a recent dramatic upturn. In fact, the graph produced in the Science article showing the temperature anomaly from 500 – 2000 AD (no data from the post-2001 temperature standstill here) doesn’t resemble a hockey stick at all! (So you see, TreeParty, even the perpetrators of lies, the hockey stick creator, occasionally corrects himself) ;

“It’s clear that(when viewing this map) the world was warmer during medieval times. Marked on the map are study after study (all peer-reviewed) from all around the world with results of temperatures from the medieval time compared to today. These use ice cores, stalagmites, sediments, and isotopes. They agree with 6,144 boreholes around the world which found that temperatures were about 0.5°C warmer world wide. “;

“Here we present a decadally resolved continuous sea surface temperature (SST) reconstruction from the IPWP (Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP)) that spans the past two millennia and overlaps the instrumental record, enabling both a direct comparison of proxy data to the instrumental record and an evaluation of past changes in the context of twentieth century trends. Our record from the Makassar Strait, Indonesia, exhibits trends that are similar to a recent Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction2. Reconstructed SST was, however, within error of modern values from about ad 1000 to ad 1250, towards the end of the Medieval Warm Period. SSTs during the Little Ice Age (approximately ad 1550–1850) were variable, and ~0.5 to 1 °C colder than modern values during the coldest intervals. A companion reconstruction of δ18O of sea water”

Two, you indicate that the entire planet has increased in temperature by 1°C in the last century, but why is that unusual given that that we’ve just spent 250 years coming out of the LIA and natural warming would do that, again http://bit.ly/2i1lNF4. Were you aware of the fact that the temperature of the earth hasn’t increased for more than 18 years and 9 months now, But more importantly, the steepest drop in global temperature on record just occurred, http://bit.ly/2gcGG2s , dropping temperatures by more than 1°C over land. “Others have argued that the records were caused by El Nino, a complex natural phenomenon that takes place every few years, and has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions by humans. ” ,again,http://bit.ly/2gcGG2s .

“Let’s take a look at Muller’s chart, and then compare it to the chart for the last 11 years — which the Daily Mail labels an “THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH”: First, let’s look at the top chart. A closer reading of the top chart shows that, relative to the 1950-1980 average baseline BEST uses, temperatures didn’t actually warm at all until sometime during the Great Depression, so the entire first century of the Industrial Era apparently had no impact — in a period where the dirtiest of mass energy production processes was in widest use (coal). Temperatures then started to slowly rise during an era of significantly reduced industrial output, thanks to a lengthy economic depression that gripped the entire world.” Pay close attention to what Prof. Curry says about Prof. Murray’s comments on CO2 supposedly correlation with temperature in this chart. “‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’ “

These 3 facts should take quite a bit of the starch out of your claim, as that 1°C increase in temperature has just evaporated, as all this as CO2 has continued to rise, and is now at 408.64 ppmas of June25,2017

You seem to have been sucked into this CO2 is the evil object/monster of the planet that has been perpetuated by the IPCC and devoted global warmists such as yourself and which is now being sold as gospel to the small group of other scientists who make up your band of cohorts who believe in this “settled science”. As I think I’ll show you, I believe that it’s all a bunch of hooey, if not outright horse-poop, and you are definitely an acolyte for the AlGore priesthood, but probably not making the money he is, else you wouldn’t be on these stupid webpages.

I feel like I need to share with you some facts regarding the IPCC. Rather than being a organization which looks for all of the issues regarding climate change, you must be aware by now that the IPCC was only tasked with looking for human-induced climate change, http://bit.ly/1xJPNb4 , not examining any other explanations for climate change. So naturally, all grants towards climate research had that in mind, finding humans responsible. So billions of dollars have gone towards finding man responsible, rather than clear and open-minded research, it’s all one-way. Every new research paper that is published supposedly finds more and more bazaar and hyperbolic statements of doom for the planet and the IPCC has also increasingly perpetrated this mess, ignoring the natural elements of climate change. Perhaps Syun Akasofu, Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center, captured that sentiment best when he said that ”Unfortunately, many scientists appear to forget that weather and climate also are controlled by nature, as we witness weather changes every day and climate changes in longer terms. During the last several years, I have suggested that it is important to identify the natural effects and subtract them from the temperature changes. Only then can we be sure of the man-made contributions. This suggestion brought me the dubious honor of being designated “Alaska’s most famous climate change skeptic.””

Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion is one of the best science books in years. It exposes in delicious detail, datum by datum, how a great scientific mistake of immense political weight was perpetrated, defended and camouflaged by a scientific establishment that should now be red with shame. It is a book about principal components, data mining and confidence intervals—subjects that have never before been made thrilling. It is the biography of a graph…Montford’s book is written with grace and flair. Like all the best science writers, he knows that the secret is not to leave out the details (because this just results in platitudes and leaps of faith), but rather to make the details delicious, even to the most unmathematical reader. I never thought I would find myself unable to put a book down because—sad, but true—I wanted to know what happened next in an r-squared calculation. This book deserves to win prizes.

Matt Ridley, Prospect Magazine (UK)

The Hockey Stick Illusion by A W Montford, brilliantly tells the bizarre tale of how Mann’s colleagues, calling themselves “the Hockey Team” and now at the heart of the IPCC, managed to resurrect the discredited graph for inclusion in its 2007 report.

Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph (UK)

For anybody who wants to understand the scientific and psychological background to Climategate, there is no better read than Andrew Montford’s new book, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science.

Peter Foster, National Post (Canada)

A.W. Montford’s book tells the gripping and suspenseful details of McIntyre’s pursuit of the self-denominated “hockey team” led by Michael Mann, who wrote the key chapters on his own work for the IPCC, and Phil Jones, who maintains the temperature record used by the IPCC to document the “Hockey Stick”: limning allegedly unprecedented and anomalous anthropogenic global warming in the Twentieth Century while denying that any comparable or greater warming occurred in the Medieval period.

George Gilder, Discovery News (US)

Montford has done a great service to science, to history and to a public grown sceptical of the scare stories upon which vast amounts of research funding, carbon trading and energy technology subsidies depend. That story cannot now claim that the 20th century warmth is unprecedented.

Peter Taylor, ECOS

As far as the pre-industrial CO2 in the atmosphere goes, other sources contest that the CO2 in the atmosphere was ever really as low as 280 ppm.

“The youngest CO2 data, is not based on ice cores but on South PoleAir Flasksamples– which consistently show CO2 higher than 300 ppm. The point in time useful for considering what CO2 concetrations really were before humans started to burn fossil fuels is at the start of the Industrial Revolution— about 1750 AD. A key assumption is that pre-industrial CO2 concentrations were less than 280 ppm and that everything above that is caused by humans. This assumption,however, is not without problems, although seldom discussed.”, http://bit.ly/2i0i0eg ….For reasons that are unclear, only a few of these tests were considered valid by G.S. Calendar (1898-1964)– the grandfather of the theory of man-made global warming. …However, CO2 data available at the time showed concentrations ranged between 250 ppm and 550 ppm (Figure 4). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) places the pre-industrial concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at 280 ppm, based largely on the ice core record, although this has never been otherwise substantiated (7), emphasis added.

Furthermore, Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski argues convincingly that the CO2 levels in many ice cores have been contaminated as well as subjected to intentionally distorted sampling. “When climate science was not driven by ideology, it was generally assumed that long-term astronomical cycles—those measured in tens or hundreds of thousands of years—were the way in which climate had to be situated. …A significant declining trend of values in Figure 1, between 1860 and 1900, when CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning increased from 91.5 to 485.6 tons of carbon was similar to a decrease to a global surface air temperature decrease in this period.7 This may reflect lower CO2degassing from colder oceans, the result of natural climate fluctuations.8…To reach the low 19th-century CO2 concentration, the cornerstone of this hypothesis, Callender used a bias selection method. From a set of 26 19th-century averages, Callender rejected 16 that were higher than his assumed low global average, and 2 that were lower. … Because of uncertainties in 19th-century air measurements, studies of greenhouse gases in glacier ice are often regarded – incorrectly – as the most reliable estimates of CO2, CH 4 (methane), and N2O (Nitrous oxide) in the pre-industrial atmosphere…On the basis of these analyses, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change11 declared that the pre-industrial CO2 level in the atmosphere was 26 percent lower than current levels. The IPCC also declared that the pre-industrial concentration of N2O was 19 percent lower and that CH4was 215 percent lower than current levels.

However, no study has yet demonstrated that the content of trace greenhouse trace gases in old ice, or even the interstitial area from recent snow represents the atmospheric composition. One must read the entire section on “Fudging the CO2 Data” section to see how various researchers and the IPCC manipulated the data on CO2 levelsto ignore levels as high as 700-2450ppmv yes, that’s two thousand,four hundred and fifty, in pre-industrial ice. …This article finishes with this summary:

“The data in Figure 9 suggest that CO2 atmospheric mass increases were notrelated to man-made emissions of this gas, but rather these increases depended on volcanic eruptions and other causes of natural climate fluctuations,”http://bit.ly/2iyXXAE .” (Emphasis added)

“Over the last 40 million years the CO2 level in the atmosphere has fallen from 1000-2000 ppmv to a minimum of 180 ppmv 20.000 years ago Not since the Perm period circa 250 million years ago has the CO2 level been so low.“http://bit.ly/2iOo7mx. So, there’s nocausation between high CO2 levels and high temperatures.

Finally, regarding CO2’s influence on climate, are you aware that CO2 has only a logarithmic effect on temperatures, http://bit.ly/2fK9xuc . The third chart (bar chart) shows that most of the effect of CO2 is gained by the 1st 20 ppm, and that each extra 20 ppm has less and less effect on emperature. As Mr. Archibald explains “Lo and behold, the first 20 ppm accounts for over half of the heating effect to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, by which time carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas. One thing to bear in mind is that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 got down to 180 ppm during the glacial periods of the ice age the Earth is currently in (the Holocene is an interglacial in the ice age that started three million years ago).”

But let’s look at whether CO2 actually drives temperatures/climate. The following webpages clearly show that temperature leads CO2 levels in the past, http://bit.ly/2gMdH2C, and http://bit.ly/2gv5ZgK Mr. Caryl summed up his article with the following “Nowhere here do we see any indication that CO2 is driving temperature”

Also, the The astronomical theory of the Ice Age“The ice age reached its peak 18,000 years ago when the tilt had risen to a value of 23.4 degrees from a low of 22.2 degrees 32,000 years ago. Since then the tilt has reached a maximum of 24.2 degrees (10,000 years ago). Today, the Earth’s tilt measures 23.5 degrees, and the large ice sheets have disappeared. The three orbital parameters that are affected are the eccentricity (how circular the orbit is) which varies with periods between 400,000 and 100,000years;obliquity (how tilted the Earth is with respect to its orbit around the Sun) which varies with a period of about 40,000 and affects the solar radiation most strongly at the poles; and precession (changes in the distance between the Earth and Sun in a given season) which varies with a period of about 23,000 years and affects the solar radiation most strongly at the equatorThese changes in the orbit of the Earth produce changes in the solar radiation received by the Earth that vary over periods of about 40,000 years, strongest at the poles, and 20,000 years, strongest at the equator. These changes can be matched with the cycle of the ice ages as revealed by the geologic record; however, the largest variation of the ice ages over the past million years has a period of 100,000 years. The 100,000 year cycle is thought to be the result of the interactions of the 40,000 and 20,000 year variations in solar radiation and various geophysical processes that occur on the Earth over long periods; however, this is a subject of continuing research. “ (Emphasis added)

The above webpage first directs one to view this webpage first, and then come back to the original webpage. “Finally, the Greenland ice sheets that the ice cores came from obviously survived much higher temperatures without sliding into the sea, as global warming alarmists claim will happen by 2100. “So you can see that the IPCC’s narrative that current temperatures are unprecedented is simply not true. (Emphasis added)

Do you still want to stick with your unproven theory that CO2 is somehow involved with temperature increases? I will agree that there’s been some correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures, but always, temperatures led CO2 upwards, NOT the other way around.

Other explanations for why Greenland’s warming are offered:

“Linked, abrupt changes of North Atlantic deep water formation, North Atlantic sea ice extent, and widespread climate occurred repeatedly during the last ice age cycle and beyond in response to changing freshwater fluxes and perhaps other causes. This paradigm, developed and championed especially by W. S. Broecker, has repeatedly proven to be successfully predictive as well as explanatory with high confidence. Much work remains to fully understand what happened and to assess possible implications for the future, but the foundations for this work are remarkably solid.”, http://b.gatech.edu/2s318ZF

and Broecker et al. stated, “Despite the tenuous nature of the information presently available and of the difficulties inherent in thinking in terms of mode changes, we must begin to explore this alternate track” (p.25).

“The story of melting glaciers has been told ad nauseam by climate catastrophists and the scientifically gullible news media for years. This blog has reported on the purported “rapid melting” of the Himalayan glaciers several times before (see “Himalayan Glaciers Not Melting” and “Himalayan Glacier Disappearance Overstated”). It is true that glaciers melt, they are the primary source of water in a number of regions around the world….

As I have often stated, this is an interglacial period, ice is supposed to melt. Otherwise there would still be a mile of ice on top of New York City.”, http://bit.ly/2jovlhU

“In the last million years the Earth’s climate has alternated between ice ages lasting about 100,000 years and interglacial periods of 10,000 to 15,000 years. The new results from the NEEM ice core drilling project in northwest Greenland, led by the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen show that the climate in Greenland was around 8 degrees C warmer than today during the last interglacial period, the Eemian period, 130,000 to 115,000 thousand years ago.” As you can see, while nearly 1,000,000 years ago, temperatures were 8°C warmer than today.http://bit.ly/2j0rW5x I think it’s just normal/natural cyclic ice ages and interglacial periods. This cyclic changeover has been observed in many places in the world:”The findings also show evidence of ice in Greenland during the Eemian interglacial period 125,000 years ago, which indicates that although we are now confronted with global warming, the whole ice sheet will probably not melt and bring about the tremendous sea-level rises which have been the subject of so much discussion.”, (emphasis added) http://bit.ly/2iQYeiA ,”

“The latest such find is a woolen tunic discovered next to a thawing glacier in southern Norway.” http://bit.ly/2iUGuqe , “Melting glaciers in Western Canada are revealing tree stumps up to 7,000 years old where the region’s rivers of ice have retreated to a historic minimum, a geologist said today.”, http://bit.ly/2iRZd6n ,”Dr. Christian Schlüchter’s discovery of 4,000-year-oldchunks of wood at the leading edge of a Swiss glacier was clearly not cheered by many members of the global warming doom-and-gloom science orthodoxy.…Other evidence exists that there is really nothing new about dramatic glacier advances and retreats. In fact the Alps were nearly glacier-free again about 2,000 years ago. Schlüchter points out that “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers.” Prof. Schlüchter criticized today’s climate scientists for focusing on a time period that is “indeed much too short“, http://bit.ly/2i5gmHK .

“Through analysis and interpretation of these photographic pairs, information is extracted to document Alaskan landscape evolution and glacier dynamics for the last century-and-a-quarter on local and regional scales and the response of the Alaskan landscape to retreating glacier ice.””, http://bit.ly/2jnhys5 , “”The climate 400,000 years ago was not that much different than what we see today, or at least what is predicted for the end of the century,” said Anders Carlson, an associate professor at Oregon State University and co-author on the study. “The forcing was different, but what is important is that the region crossed the threshold allowing the southern portion of the ice sheet to all but disappear. This may give us a better sense of what may happen in the future as temperatures continue rising,” Carlson added.”, http://bit.ly/2iQmmDf

“The climate change, the warming that’s certainly taking place here, is by no means uniform. In fact, 4,000 miles to the east of the Bering Glacier, weather stations in Greenland are reporting that temperatures are actually getting cooler. “, http://cbsn.ws/2jv60TH .

““Greenland really was green! However, it was millions of years ago. Greenland looked like the green Alaskan tundra, before it was by the second largest body of ice on Earth,” Dr Rood said.”, http://bit.ly/2jxGgG4

Third, there is NO CONSENSUS IN SCIENCE, climate or otherwise. Science is about results of experiments which can be replicated by others. No matter many how many people you say agree with this Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory, it’s still just that, a THEORYONLY. If numbers of scientists were the sole determinant, I’d guess that the 31,000+ scientists, including more than 9000 PhD’s, who signed the Global Warming Petition Project, http://nws.mx/2hhh2vf would easily dwarf the small numbers of scientists who actually believe in AGW, not to mention these great climate scientists who disagree with your so-called “settled science”, http://bit.ly/2hsu84A . Finally, here’s a list of UN climate scientists who disagree with everything you’ve said, http://bit.ly/2h4pUTb . These are the very people who are writing these so-called “world death and destruction scenarios”. It sounds to me like the IPCC has an agenda that will guide the findings and policy of their reports.

Also, “Glaciers come and go naturally and have for 20 billion years. The Earth couldn’t care less, he said. If humans were extinct, the glaciers would still be melting today, he said. Are we going to fix things by creating less greenhouse gases?” Molina said. No. And if you think so, you don’t know how the Earth works – you’re a politician.” “, http://bit.ly/2iUMooNAnd that’s what we got with the IPCC, a political body, NOT a scientific one.

“Finally there is a decent survey on the topic, and it shows that less than half of what we would call “climate scientists” who research the topic and for the most part, publish in the peer reviewed literature, would agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions. Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certainty.

More than 1800 international scientists studying various aspects of climate change (including climate physics, climate impacts, and mitigation) responded to the questionnaire. Some 6550 people were invited to participate in this survey, which took place in March and April 2012. Respondents were picked because they had authored articles with the key words ‘global warming’ and/or ‘global climate change’, covering the 1991–2011 period, via the Web of Science, or were included the climate scientist database assembled by Jim Prall, or just by a survey of peer reviewed climate science articles. Prall’s database includes some 200 names that have criticized mainstream science and about half had only published in “gray literature”. (But hey, the IPCC quoted rather a lot of gray literature itself. Donna LaFramboise found 5,587 non peer reviewed articles in AR4.)”

By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem. …

The survey finds that 24percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model. “In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth.” Moreover, “they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives.”

Another group of scientists fit the “Fatalists” model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, “diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling.” These scientists are likely to ask, “How can anyone take action if research is biased?”…

Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern. ”…

It’s becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus , assertsMr. James Taylor.

“The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of ‘settled science’ and an overwhelming ‘consensus’ in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong,” the petition asserts. “No such consensus or settled science exists. …

Over 9,000 of the petition’s signatories have a PhD. in a scientific field. …

For all the talk of “settled science,” all that has been settled is the stunning inaccuracies of alarmists — from failed computer models and a discredited “hockey stick” graphic that pointed to exponential warming, to dire predictions of melting Himalayan glaciers, receding rain forests, increases in hurricane activity, and the end of snow. …

The report also found that Northern Hemisphere temperature changes have been greatly exaggerated, and “based on the best available temperature records,” the region has actually warmed only “about 0.65 degrees Celsius [about 1.1 degree F.] since 1860.” …

“The alleged “consensus” is nothing more than an agreement that the weather has warmed in the past 300 years. Yet the quantum and attribution of warming are hotly debated among climatologists. Even today, measuring global temperature is subject to errors, biases, missing data, and subjective adjustments.”

Adherents of the “science-is-settled” argument often cite a study that tabulated the number of times global warming appeared in abstracts of articles and concluded that 97 percent of climate scientists accept the theory that human activity causes global warming.

“However, inspection of a claim by Cook et al. (Environ Res Lett 8:024024, 2013) of 97.1% consensus, heavily relied upon by Bedford and Cook, shows just 0.3% endorsement of the standard definition of consensus: that most warming since 1950 is anthropogenic. “,

The 97 percent figure is highly misleading considering that only 32.6 percent of the scientists endorsed anthropogenic global warming, while two-thirds expressed no position.”

I see it differently. I predict a high likelihood of substantial collapse of the global warming movement, both domestically and internationally, over the course of the next couple of years….

Start with the EPA. To the extent that the global warming movement has anything to do with “science,” EPA is supposedly where that science is vetted and approved on behalf of the public before being turned into policy. …

For example, when a major new Research Report came out back in September claiming to completely invalidate all of the bases on which EPA claims that CO2 is a danger to human health and welfare, and thus to undermine EPA’s authority to regulate the gas under the Clean Air Act, EPA simply failed to respond. In the same vein, essentially all prominent global warming alarmistsrefuse to debate anyone who challenges any aspect of their orthodoxy. Well, that has worked as long as they and their allies have controlled all of the agencies and all of the money. Now, it will suddenly be put up or shut up. And in case you might think that the science on this issue is “settled,” so no problem, you might enjoy this recent round-up at Climate Depot from some of the actual top scientists.A couple of excerpts:

Renowned Princeton Physicist Freeman Dyson: ‘I’m 100% Democratand I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on climate issue, and the Republicans took the right side. ‘ . . .

How do you explain an almost-20-year “pause” in increasing temperatures even as CO2 emissionshave accelerated? …

University of Pennsylvania Geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack noted in 2014, “None of the strategies that have been offered by the U.S. government or by the EPA or by anybody else has the remotest chance of altering climate if in fact climate is controlled by carbon dioxide.”

In layman’s terms: All of the so-called ‘solutions’ to global warming are purely symbolic when it comes to climate. So, even if we actually faced a climate catastrophe and we had to rely on a UN climate agreement, we would all be doomed!

‘We see Morano trying to challenge a few scientists, but it typically ends with them fleeing the microphones. After all, he’s no stranger to debate.’ –‘The film’s most effective moments come when left-of-center experts describe how they abandoned their previous climate change positions. Doing so opened them up to scathing critiques from their colleagues. Some even found themselves unwelcome at gigs they held for some time. It’s another signal that dissent won’t be tolerated in climate change circles.‘

“Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement. …

“Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass,” he stated.

Here’s my prediction: As soon as the United States stops parroting the global warming line, the other countries will quickly start backing away from it as well. This is “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” with the U.S. in the role of the little kid who is the only one willing to say the obvious truth in the face of mass hysteria. …

During the eight Obama years, the energy sector of the U.S. economy has been substantially transformed by a technological revolution that has dramatically lowered the cost of energy and hugely benefited the American consumer. I’m referring, of course, to the fracking revolution. How much of the tens of billions of U.S. energy subsidies and research funding in that time went toward this revolution that actually produced cheaper energy that works? Answer: Not one single dollar!All of the money was completely wasted on things that are uneconomic and will disappear as soon as the government cuts off the funding spigot. All of this funding can and should be zeroed out in the next budget. Believe me, nobody will notice other than the parasites who have been wasting the money. …

The environmental movement has climbed itself way out onto the global warming limb. Now the Trump administration is about to start sawing off the limb behind them. “

“Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998…

“The first time I experienced a twinge of climate change doubt was when I learned that carbon dioxide (CO2) comprised less than 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. In truth, such a seemingly small amount shouldn’t be underestimated since CO2 starts trapping heat quite effectively at far more minuscule concentrations. But at the time, I thought, “That’s strange. I would have thought it was a lot more….

At that point, two minor pieces of information helped to trigger a real curiosity for me—and led me to realize that the issue was far more complicated than I had always believed.

The first was learning that man produces only a tiny portion of all CO2 released into the atmosphere each year. In contrast, for example, termites alone release far more CO2 annually (and by several orders of magnitude) than all the burning of fossil fuels. The second was learning that there had been a global cooling scare in the 1970s….

Simply put, I went from wholeheartedly believing in man-made “climate change” to viewing the science undergirding the case as veryquestionable. Overall, I became resentful that I’d been naively indoctrinated by a daily, one-sided media barrage. And I started to look at myself as something of a freedom fighter—someone who was pushing back against misinformation—and making peopleaware that they were being manipulated. …

For starters, CO2 is actually a rather flawed “greenhouse gas.” When CO2 is first introduced into the atmosphere it rapidly absorbs as much heat (in the form of infrared radiation) as possible. But it doesn’t take long for CO2 to become “optically saturated.” This means that after reaching roughly 0.0020 percent (20 parts per million) of the atmosphere, CO2 starts fading. From then on, it takes ever-doubling amounts of CO2 to trap the same amount of heat. By the present concentration of 0.04 percent (400 parts per million), CO2 is essentially saturated—andcan’tmeaningfully trap much additional heat. …

In truth, basic science demonstrates exactly the opposite, which is why climate scientists actually base most of their projected warming on “positive feedback” from water vapor. …

Simply put, water vapor in the atmosphere inevitably transitions to clouds. And cumulus clouds not only reflect solar radiation back into space but also produce rain—which not only lowers surface temperatures but also scrubs CO2 from the atmosphere. …

So the real question should be: Well if CO2 isn’t driving global warming, what is? …

And so, not only did solar activity increase sharply during the 20th century, but this same increase in output corresponds quite closely with other warm periods recorded over the past few thousands of years. …

However, this view overlooks the related—and larger—impacts of solar variability, including atmospheric ionization and cloud formation. And so, when considered together, these associated factors demonstrate a more complete picture of solar variability’s relevance …

UV radiation is the primary source of atmospheric warmth, which helps to explain why increased UV penetration during the latter portion of the 20th century contributed to a rise in temperatures …

In fact, since the late 1990s, both satellite data and weather balloon measurements show a net flatlining of global temperatures. …

Simply put, the theory of man-made warming cannot account for a halt in the overall rise in temperatures, or why computer models (programmed to emphasize a high climate sensitivity to CO2) are continuing to diverge from actual, observed temperature measurements. …

The overall point is that there are valid reasons to question both the assumptions and policies advocated by climate change activists. It would be helpful if those who take a stand against presumed man-made warming were given a chance to expand on their reasoning, rather than face criticism and scorn.”

“Australian Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg (the guy all you warmists criticized) told the Australian that tomorrow’s meeting with the states would put statewide blackouts on the agenda, with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) briefing ministers on its findings on the South Australian crisis and the risks for other states. “Events in South Australia do show an urgent need to look at the reliability and stability of the energy system,’’ he said. “The risk of statewide blackouts in other states will be part of the questions ministers will ask of AEMO.”

Fossil fuel, nuclear, biomass and hydro power generators can all to varying degrees supply electricity ‘on demand’, in other words supply from these sources can be called upon or adjusted to meet demand. In contrast to renewable hydro, the feed-in of wind and solar output is uncontrollably intermittent due to the uncertainty of meteorological conditions. In grid management terms they are not dispatchable. Therefore the energy system needs backup capacity from the on-demand-sources to bridge periods with high or low generation from renewables. The targeted rapid increase of power supply from intermittent renewable sources in many countries presents a fundamental challenge to the smooth functioning of many electricity supply systems.

Wind and solar power are the forms of renewable power that are growing most rapidly. In the 450 Scenario of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2016 they are expected to increase to 30% of electricity in 2040. …

Wind and solar power supply is largely governed by wind speed and the level of sunlight, which can only loosely be related to periods of power demand. It is this feature of intermittent renewable powersupply that results in the imposition of additional costs on the generating system as a whole, which will implicitly be paid for either by other generators, consumers or taxpayers.

The IEA(International Energy Agency ) disaggregates these system costs into three components:

Adequacy costs: the cost of ensuring that the power system has sufficient capacity to meet peak loads.

Balancing costs: the cost of ensuring that the power system can respond flexibly to demand changes at any given time.

Interconnection costs: the cost of linking sources of supply to sources of demand.

From the System integration costs of intermittent renewable power generation portion of http://bit.ly/2sJ5Prs

You must have questioned how the IPCC arrived at its findings. I think you should view this video, the Corbett Report’s the The IPCC Exposed . I apologize that this is 45 minutes long, but it’s well worth the effort to watch it. Please pay close attention to how Dr. Tim Ball explains how the IPCC was formed, and their constraints in reaching conclusions, by their charter. Also, the Summary for Policymakers being produced before the final IPCC report is even written appears highly problematic to me. Here also is further proof of the IPCC’s skewness towards the man-caused possible explanations of climate change .

“Read here, here and here. The UN’s IPCC political leaders, bureaucrats and the Climategate scientists have said for years that today’s temperatures are “unprecedented.” They also claim that all temperatures to the right of the black-dash line on the graph below are natural; and, all temperatures to the left of the black-dash line are unnatural, due to human CO2. The past visible history (as shown) of temperature records makes both these claims flat-out lies. The historical record also indicates that temperatures fluctuate up and down without any relationship to the CO2 level. (click on image to enlarge), http://bit.ly/2jw0ekx . (Emphasis added) Other references that deal with the so-called “unprecedented” say that, “10. Scientists who study satellite data should not use the term “unprecedented changes”. (They do not have satellite data before the 1970s and cannot tell if any of the changes are “unprecedented”, even those that occurred in the 1930s or 1940s, not having comparable data.)

Let’s examine the Climategate files, for some inconsistencies with how this “Settled science” was generated.

First, Briffa’s Yumal study of trees was seriously flawed, as described here and here .

Then Michael Mann generated a hockey-stick graph using Bristlecone Pines (BCP) , from the area of White Mountains of California that was covered by a drought condition for many years. “According to real scientists, the graph also gave extreme weighting to datasets that showed unusual 20th-century warming at the expense of those that did not. And the program that Mr Mann created to draw the graph would have shown the 20th century as unusually warm even if random red noise rather than real-world data were fed in. There were numerous other statistical curiosities. Mr Mann’s graph is perhaps the most laughable and widely-discredited object in the history of bad science supporting worse politics. “

From the diagram, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age have disappeared, to be replaced by a largely benign and slightly cooling linear trend in climate – until 1900 AD …

As a piece of science and statistics it was seriously flawed as two data series representing such different variables as temperature and tree rings simply cannot be credibly grafted together into a single series.”

Perhaps you’ll be compelled to watch and listen to Dr. Easterbrook as he discusses climate with the Washington state legislators . Listen closely as he says that CO2 cannot cause Global Warming.

In summary, their extensive analysis of the hydrological evidence does not comport with the simulated findings of the most advanced CO2-centric climate models available (surprise, surprise).

Clearly, the accompanying graph depicts the never ending condition of natural climate change, providing further proof that human fossil fuel emissions – and Exxon – are not to blame.”

Here is an article describing why the IPCC models of climate science are NOT useful and should not be used for any modeling, http://bit.ly/2lrM4OL . A key portion of this article is as follows “If the warming since 1950 was caused by humans, then what caused the warming during the period 1910-1940? The period 1910-1940 comprises about 40% of the warming since 1900, but is associated with only 10% of the carbon dioxide increase since 1900. Clearly, human emissions of greenhouse gases played little role in this early warming. The mid-century period of slight cooling from 1945-1975 – referred as the ‘grand hiatus’ – has also not been satisfactorily explained….

Hence we don’t have a good understanding of the relative climate impacts of the above or their potential impacts on the evolution of the 21st century climate.”

TreeParty, you said “Other possible mechanisms, and groups of mechanisms, have been considered, evaluated, and rejected, as the CHIEF driver of the measurable global warming. …To recapitulate: There is no other scientifically defensible explanation for the observable rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet but AGW. “

Here’s a near complete takedown of your global warming theory, delivered from the great economist, Bjorn Lomborg, “Paris is Not the Solution by Bjørn Lomborg – Project Syndicate” Lomborg is the Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” and “Cool It”, the the first of these two was my first of my “ textbooks”, learning the true state of the planet, not some talking points that aren’t legit. Please excuse me while I point out some key points of this article,

The inadequacies of the Paris agreement were acknowledged by environmentalists at the time it was signed, though some are changing their tune, in order to stand steadfastly against Trump. Back in 2015, the noted environmentalist Bill McKibben concluded that the accord did just enough “to keep both environmentalists and the fossil fuel industry from complaining too much.” Now, he fears the withdrawal “undercuts our civilization’s chances of surviving global warming.”

“There is nothing new in the politicization of climate policy or the over-selling of a political agreement. But the deeper problem is that a lot of puffery about the state of renewable energy has accompanied the Paris hype….

This, too, is not new. “A largely or wholly solar economy can be constructed in the United States with straightforward soft technologies that are now demonstrated and now economic or nearly economic,” environmentalist Amory Lovins declared in 1976. In 1984, the Worldwatch Institute assured us that wind subsidies “will not be needed within a few years.”

In fact, the world will spend $125 billion on wind and solar subsidies alone in 2017. Despite four decades of financial support, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that wind provides just 0.5% of today’s energy needs, and solar photovoltaic a miniscule 0.1%.

More than $3 trillion will be spent on subsidies just on wind and solar photovoltaic over the next 25 years. Even by 2040, and assuming that all of the Paris agreement’s promises are fulfilled, the IEA expects wind and solar to provide, respectively, just 1.9% and 1% of global energy. This is not what an economy in the midst of an “inevitable” shift away from fossil fuels looks like. …

Green energy investors and politicians lead the public-relations advance, assisted by a credulous media that likes to tell green-technology “success” stories. But if green energy were already competitive or near-competitive with fossil fuels, the Paris agreement would be unnecessary. The entire world would be dumping fossil fuels for the cheaper, better option.

It’s not very complicated: We must end wasteful subsidies for both fossil fuels and inefficient solar and wind. And we should focus on investment in innovation to improve green energy.

TreeParty, I’m sure you’re aware that there are literally hundreds if not a thousand issues that affect

of switching between positive and negative phases about every 30 years, the latter seems to have a

variable periodicity, with occasional very abrupt changes between the negative and positive phases.

Perhaps the second best reason for any Greenland’s warming and Arctic Sea ice loss – “it’s the wind” says NASA, http://bit.ly/2oIKE3J , quoting from the article “Our results suggest that the decadal AO [Arctic Oscillation] and multidecadal LFO, [low-frequency oscillation (LFO) with an approximate time scale of 60–80 years] drive large amplitude natural variability in the Arctic making detection of possible long-term trends induced by greenhouse gas warming most difficult”, as Polyakov concluded. TreeParty, this is NASA research, so why would they lie to you, given their interest in keeping the global warming fantasy alive for yet more funding from the government? As far as this research goes, if these researchers cannot find a distinction between natural warming and man-made warming, that cinches it for me, as apparently there is NO man-made warming, hence my title of this blog posting.

All of which leads me to my final point, and that is all the above is controlled by the Sun.They are all natural processes and depend on the single source of energy affecting our world to modify it.The Left Ignores Newest Climate Science, http://bit.ly/2jUFALM, “Solar Cycles, Not CO2, Determine Climate”, http://bit.ly/2hhSi56 , “P. Gosselin: Yet Another Paper Shows “The Enormous Importance Of Solar Activity Fluctuations On Climate”, http://bit.ly/2iIFC5t

“Interestingly, almost all other periods of drought occurred during times of solar minima, among them the Oort Minimum, Wolf Minimum, Maunder Minimum and Dalton Minimum (see Figure 1 above). Every time the sun goes into a slumber for a few decades, the rains on the Tibet Plateaustay away. A frequency analysis of precipitation curves also delivers evidence on solar cycles. Here the Gleissberg Cycle (60-120 year period) and the Suess/de Vries Cycle (180-220 years) are seen in the datasets. “

“It was found that century-type variation in Greenland and Antarctic nitrate correlates fairly significantly with the corresponding Gleissberg cycle: (a) in sunspot number over 1700–1970 AD; (b) in 10Be concentration in Central and South Greenland over 1576–1970 AD. Thus, presence of century-scale relationship between polar nitrate and solar activity was confirmed over the last 4 centuries. That proves that NO3− concentration in polar ice caps could serve as indicator of long-term solar variability.”

Yet more evidence of natural variability being the cause of climate change, rather than this hoax of CO2 the driver of temperature.

“It was found that century-type variation in Greenland and Antarctic nitrate correlates fairly significantly with the corresponding Gleissberg cycle: (a) in sunspot number over 1700–1970 AD; (b) in 10Be concentration in Central and South Greenland over 1576–1970 AD. Thus, presence of century-scale relationship between polar nitrate and solar activity was confirmed over the last 4 centuries. That proves that NO3− concentration in polar ice caps could serve as indicator of long-term solar variability.”

Yet more evidence of natural variability of climate, rather than this hoax of CO2 the big driver of temperature.

“The Greenland Ice Sheet is gaining near record amounts of ice this year, (July 20, 2017 ). Very little melting has occurred this summer, which is about to start winding down ….

Temperatures on the Greenland Ice Sheet have been extremely cold, and broke the all-time record for Northern Hemisphere July cold on July 4, at -33C. …

We see the same pattern year after. Lots of ice gain over most of Greenland’s surface, particularly southeast Greenland. …

Despite all evidence to the contrary, government scientists insist on believing fake GRACE data which shows almost all of Greenland losing ice. …

Science used to involve data, facts, integrity and thought, but now it involvesstriving for grant money. Meanwhile, the climate mafia insists the Arctic is experiencing record melting, and “cracking up.” …

These are criminals, not scientists. “

I could not agree more with this assessment. While you are suggesting that burning of fossil fuels is causing Greenland to melt, a good bit of Greenland is actually increasing in ice extent.

Here’s another video for you to watch, this one by by David Dilley, former NOAA Meteorologist and current CEO and senior research scientist – Global Weather Oscillations, Inc. , this one will answer all of your questions and disbeliefs regarding Global Cooling, I believe

TreeParty, I used to be like you, thinking that mankind was destroying the planet. But then someone told me that Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park erupted hundreds of years before, throwing lava for hundred of miles around. I checked it out, and sure enough, it was true. Of course, we all know that the meteorite which struck the Yucatan Peninsula killing all the dinosaurs. Those were my Epiphany moments, when I started to do more digging and questioning my own ideaology. I wonder if you will question your own ideology, asformer Greenpeace member Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World , which uses actual facts to show that the quality of the environment of the Earth has been improving, or asKlaus–Eckert Puls did?

“Former Harvard Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl: ‘According to NOAA, that probability that a different year than 2014 was the warmest one was 52%.
According to NASA, the probability that a different year than 2014 was the warmest one was 62%.‘

It is more likely than not that the warmest year was a different one than 2014.”

Since man continues to pump CO2 into the atmosphere don’t you think that temperature should be much higher then it is today?

Finally, the only thing I have to ask you is: Is there anything anybody could ever say, show, write, demonstrate, ask or explain/comment to a blog, that will make you change your mind?

If your answer is “No”, I suspect you have a “Congealed Mind“ as described here., so there’s no point in any further debate with you.

But, I have enjoyed you where you are wrong, I believe, but please continue, but please bring some real data to the discussion on your next go round, rather than this extreme environmentist dogma you so willingly spout. Perhaps you can also provide a scientist or two willing to go on the record as far as supporting both of your beliefs.

Why further percentage increases in renewable energy is neither economical,environmentally/conservation-wise, or grid stability, to the nation’s advantage, nor conducive to our nationalstrategic interest

Dear Pres. Obama,
I’ve taken the liberty of jotting down some notes from various experts on energy and related topics, to try and show you why any further increases in renewable energy percentage is neither cost-effective nor good for our national interest.

Regarding the cost for renewable energy:

“The authors find that ratepayers are paying an extra$8.5 billion to $10 billion per yearfor using wind energy, which generates 3.5 percent of our electricity, rather than other cost effective forms of generation. This is in addition to the taxcredits, which the Obama Administration insisted be extended as part of the tax agreement. “

“Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobsover 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches. But the data are nonetheless revealing: for the over $26billion committed since2009, DOE Section 1703and 1705 loan guarantees have created only 2,298permanentjobs –that’s $11.45 millionper job.”

“…AWEA claims that the wind industry supports 73,000 jobs. But how much do those jobs cost taxpayers?
Earlier this year, Susan Combs, the Texascomptroller of public accounts, came up with an estimate. She reported that each wind-relatedjobin the Lone StarState (which has more wind-energy capacity than any other state) costs the state’s taxpayers about $1.7million.”

Why wind energy is destined to leave abandoned hulks across the country
“On February 17, 2012, the wind industry itself warned of more abandoned projects: “The wind power industry is predicting massive layoffs and stalled or abandoned projects after a deal to renew a taxcredit failed Thursday in Washington.”http://bit.ly/1M4tOBZ

Why renewableenergies are NOTa goodreplacement for fossilfuels

“But biofuels have never broken through because they are continually hampered by their lowpower density which means that producing meaningful quantities of liquid fuel requires huge quantities of plant material. For example, replacingjust10 percent of U.S. oil needs with ethanol derivedfrom switchgrass would require the annual production of about 425 million tonsof biomass. Growing that muchswitchgrass would require some 36.9 millionacres of land, or about 57,700 squaremiles. For comparison, that 36.9 million acres is equal to about 8 percent of all the cropland nowunder cultivation in the U.S. “http://bit.ly/1KwBFHM

“That means subsidies: $7 billionin 2010 alone, once tax credits, tariffs and other incentives are added together. In fact, between 1980and 2000 the U.S. government has devoted some $19billion in tax breaks alone to the ethanol-from-corn effort, according to the U.S. GovernmentAccountability Office, and ethanol subsidiesper liter of the biofuel have often been larger than the total cost of a liter of gas the biofuel replaced. A significant portion of the profits made by agribusiness giants like Poet or Archer Daniels Midland—which, along with oil company Valero, are responsible for the bulk of ethanol produced in the U.S.—can be attributed to this government largesse with taxpayer dollars.“http://bit.ly/1ENy2cB

“On a large scale, a coal mineor oil field, for instance, yields five to 50times more power per squaremeter than a solar facility,10 to 100 timesmore than a windfarm, and 100 to 1,000timesmore than a biomassplant like corn.…
The utmost defeating point for the ethanol argument is that oil yields 50 times more energy thanethanol from corn and 10 times more than ethanolfrom sugar cane, according to ecological economist Cutler Cleveland. “
This power density offossil fuels cannot be manipulated to one’s advantage when arguing for renewable energies, they are simply too great. I have heard one commentator say that if we hadn’t discovered oil and gasoline, we would’ve had toinvent it, like the Germans were trying to do in World War II to keep their war machine moving.http://tcrn.ch/1IDfQsv

“Let me explain the issues as I see them.
1. Not a good enough energy return.
2. Ethanol production uses resources that could be used for food production, and tends to raise food prices.
3. Concern about damage to the environment.
4. Requires subsidies or mandates to be salable in reasonable quantities.
5. The amount of ethanol produced may decrease, rather than increase, over time.Other “http://econ.st/1AaIi24

“Those who demonize fossil-fuel usage do not understand or appreciate the great economic technical and human advances which fossil-fuels have brought to society. Our modern society with its higher living standards and increased lifespan would not have been possible without the large amounts of cheap energy which fossil-fuels have provided over the last century-and-a-half. “http://bit.ly/1JLTlmb
Mr. Pres., although you and Ms.Gina McCarthy, EPA , would like to blame fossil fuels for every unfortunate situation that man has encountered, this research shows that poverty is the primary reason for asthma in inner-city youth “In fully adjusted models black race, Puerto Rican ethnicity, and lower household income but not residence in poor or urban areas were independent risk factors for current asthma. “, This study of more than 23,000 youth proves otherwise, so why do you promote policies which force poor people to spend more money on ridiculously high-priced renewable energy, when it neither helps their economic situation nor their health?

“First, Bryce is an energy realist who writes to effect more informed energy discourse in the hope of achieving better energy policy. In a recent televised forum at the Manhattan Institute in which he introduced his recent book, Power Hungry, Bryce maintained he is not a political or economic ideologue, is bored with political labeling, and that his ideas result from the way he was “mugged” by the laws of physics. …Second, contrary to the carefully cultivated perception that wind is David to coal’s Goliath, the record shows that people and corporations heavily involved with coal, natural gas, and oil are also involved with wind. In the 1990s, Enron’sKen Lay, helped by then–Texas governor George W. Bush (today a leading wind booster), resurrected wind technology from the tomb to which steam power had consigned it. Giant energy corporations swaddled in coal and oil production, such as Florida Power & Light, General Electric, BP, AES, and Siemens, are all intensely invested in wind. They claim to be “diversifying their energy portfolios.” But do they also expect wind to reduce their fossil fuel market share?Third, the National Academy of Sciences, in a report published in early 2007, concluded that, in the words of one of the researchers, “Wind power will thus not reduce carbon emissions; it will only slow the increase by a small amount.”[1]Engineers and environmentalists in Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, and Australia followed suit, publishing papers that are not only skeptical of wind’s CO2 offsetting abilities but also offer methodological accounting systems for scientifically calculating wind’s carbon impact on the electricity grid. None are beholden to the fossil fuel industry and none are paid lobbyists like Goggin. All, including the NAS, have been rebuffed in their efforts to examine data on wind integration behavior at meaningful time intervals and amounts; instead, they’ve been told that such data is “proprietarily confidential,” and can’t be released without the consent of the affected wind companies. So much for the transparency and accountability that were once the pillars of public policy, not to mention the scientific precept of refutability. …But it is insufficient, for reasons explained later, to account for the way that “peculiar nature” affects the thermal performance of conventional generators throughout the grid system. And it is this phenomenon that intrigued the researchers from Colorado. …It is also true that Bentek was the first to get real time performance data at sufficiently fine-grained time intervals, using an ingenious methodological approach that examined the heat rate penalties of (particularly) coal plants intimately involved with wind integration. (More on this later.) …Bentek demonstrated that, in the regions it studied, the peculiar nature of wind performance caused coal plants to perform more inefficiently, “often resulting in greater SO2, NOx, and CO2 emissions than would have occurred if less wind energy were generated and coal generation was not cycled.” The report concluded by recommending that Colorado and Texas begin replacing their older coal units with flexible fossil-fired natural gas units that produce half the emissions.
Ironically, this is precisely the recommendation that the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) made in the EWITS study Goggin cited. It is also the basis of AWEA’s own prescription for making wind variability work. On the one hand, Goggin rejects the Bentek study as a creature of the evil fossil fuel empire. But, without a hitch in his giddy-up, he then embraces language in that study that places fossil fuels in service to the white knights of wind.Whether this flop was noticed is unclear. …Because any wind “power” is a function of the cube of the wind speed along a narrow wind speed range (typically 9 to 33 mph), small changes in wind speed translate into large changes in the amount of wind energy convertible to electricity. …Over the course of a year, a wind project, if sited in good wind territory, produces an average yield of about 25-30% of its rated capacity. About 60% of the time, it produces less. ...Wind’s performance history also shows that wind plants generally produce most at the times of least demand—and least at the times of peak demand.[2]Here’s an example of routine wind flux, culled at random from a BPA posting for a brief period on January 1, 2009. BPA had 1,600 MW of installed wind. At this time, the actual wind generation was 443 MW in the first minute. Five minutes later it was 454; then it was 476; then 489; then 505, etc. Three hours later it had fallen below 200 MW–and continued downward.[3]…Because of its uncontrollable, largely unpredictable fidgety nature, it destabilizes the grid even more than demand fluctuations do. Moreover, as AWEA’s spokeswoman, Christine Real de Azua, stated a few years ago: “You really don’t count on wind energy as capacity. It is different from other technologies because it can’t be dispatched.”The National Renewable Energy Lab last year said much the same: “Wind power cannot replace the need for many ‘capacity resources’”and that any capacity value for wind is “a bonus, but not a necessity.”[5] This has serious implications for efficient grid performance. …In truth,energy produced from wind is so erratic that it can’t be converted to modern power requirements–unless that energy is “fortified” with external energy to make it dense enough for modern power needs, as we will see. This “external energy” must also be accounted for.http://bit.ly/1RdOQEW

“The section concludes with an examination of what the EIA data really show for those states for 2007 versus 2008—and what the official Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports say about causal factors for any CO2 reductions.
The Bentek study showed that wind volatility in the sampled regions of Colorado and Texas caused more CO2 emissions than would have been the case with less wind and more efficient coal plants. Using mostly sub-hourly performance data, Bentek was able to “examine in detail how coal, gas and wind interact and the resulting emissions implications.”
As noted in Part I of this series, Bentek then recommended that better results for carbon emissions offsets could be produced by introducing more responsive natural gas units on the system, in part replacing the coal plants with machines that burned 50% cleaner …
If anything, accounting for imports confirms the Bentek findings, reinforcing the view that increasing wind volatility imposes thermal inefficiencies throughout the system, ultimately saving no conventional fuels and, in the case Bentek studied, increasing CO2 emissions. AWEA, in short, has confused correlation with causation. Simply because there was a decrease in in-state fossil fuel use does not mean increased wind generation was responsible. …ConclusionAWEA’s contention that there exists “overwhelming evidence,”“indisputable data,” and “uncontestable benefits”to support its belief that wind is a potent offsetter of emissions is, at best, disingenuous and probably spurious. It is definitely not derived from scientifically vetted evidence. Whatever claims are made for wind should not ignore a grid’s requirement for capacity, in most cases in the form fossil-fuel plant operation inefficiently used to balance unreliable and erratic wind production.http://bit.ly/1J2SDuU

“Just as the grid must reduce supply in precise increments to keep pace with specific reductions in demand—or increase supply in just the right increments to keep pace with increasing demand, the grid must respond to increased wind penetration, which, to a grid operator, looks much like a reduction in demand. Since wind plants are continuously generating between zero and 100% of their rated capacity in flux, providing who-knows-what for any future time, conventional generation must infill any reduction in wind energy at the precise increment of that reduction and, conversely, it must be withdrawn in increments that match any wind increases. …
However, in areas like Texas, where there is no day-ahead spot market, wind is responsible for eroding natural gas prices, as the Wall Street Journal reported last March. Suffice it to say, as Lisa Linowes once did:“Since the price paid for 90% of the generation is established twenty-four hours in advance of the power day, any low-cost participation from wind will have only a marginal impact on prices limited to those resources operating within the real-time market.”[5]
Government projections, particularly those from the National Renewable Energy Lab, that show wind can provide a substantial percentage of electricity in the United States while substantially reducing CO2 emissions are uncontaminated by reality; they have no more credibility than college football polls. Simulations based upon even hourly dispatch models without considering the gustiness of the wind and the corresponding heat rate penalties yield incomplete, if not duplicitous, information about a complex process—while assumptions about wind’s ability to replace generation one-to-one are cartoonish misrepresentations of reality.
The NREL projections do not even try to account for the impact of thermal cycling events in response to wind volatility. …
Measurement of greenhouse gas emissions is imprecise and statistical. …WHAT THE USEIA DATA REALLY SHOW
Here’s what Robert Bryce had reported in his Wall Street Journal article: “The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has estimated the potential savings from a nationwide 25% renewable electricity standard…. Best-case scenario: about 306 million tons less CO2 by 2030. Given that the agency expects annual U.S. carbon emissions to be about 6.2 billion tons in 2030, that expected reduction will only equal about 4.9% of emissions nationwide.”There is a worst-case scenario: all that wind will produce virtually no reductions, a conclusion of the National Academy of Science.[6]
Bryce also reported that the NREL believes that if 20% of the electricity in the eastern U.S. came from wind,“the likely reduction in carbon emissions would be less than 200 million tons per year,” not even a drop in the bucket, as we will see.
In discussing 2009 CO2 reductions, the EIA does state wind was responsible for avoiding 39 mmt. This was 19% of the total claimed CO2 emissions drop for the year—205 mmt— which also factored reduced demand and improved nuclear (26 mmt) and natural gas (82mmt) efficiency. However, since the total CO2 emissions tied to electricity production for the year was 2295 mmt, the 39 mmt from wind contributed only 1.6% of the total—a thimbleful, despite the presence of over 35000MW of installed wind capacity.And even this may have substantially overstated the case for wind,given the margin for error inherent in the EIA’s emission savings projection from wind, which also did not account for wind-induced emissions from inefficient cycling.http://bit.ly/1NMtrN0

“Any explanation about causation must honestly and transparently account for all variables at play. It should not consist of cherry picked items favorable to a particular agenda while ignoring other, less favorable factors. …
With over 100,000 massive wind turbines around the world—35,000 plus in North America—not one coal plant has closed due to the installation of any wind projects. Nor is there empirical evidence that there is less coal burned per unit of electricity produced as a specific consequence of wind.Ontario has long promised to retire (but has never been able to do so) all its coal plants. Officials tout that they will be replaced by wind. To hedge its renewable energy bet, the Ontario government is building natural-gas facilities as insurance against new wind projects.In other words, the province expects to replace coal with natural gas, not wind.The latter could not exist without either hydro, which presently provides the province about 25% of total generation (wind is about one percent) or flexible natural gas generators.LET’S GET REAL
Wind technology is NOT universally recognizedfor its ability to reduce CO2 emissions, for many have contested that presumption. And, in the wake of Bryce’s article, many more will soon join the fray. …
The Bentek study is supported by the work of engineers like Kent Hawkins in Canada (here and here), Peter Lang in Australia (here and here), Bryan Leyland in New Zealand, Jim Oswald in Britain, C. le Pair and Kees de Groot in The Netherlands, and several studies in Germany, Spain and Denmark, some of which are summarized in Bryce’s latest book. …Lang, Le Pair/De Groot, Oswald, and Hawkins have independently developed differing methodologies for assessing wind’s potential to engage greenhouse gas emissions, and they are in remarkable agreement about their conclusion: that the higher wind penetration on virtually any grid system, the greater potential for more CO2 emissions than would be the case without any wind at all. …
Consider just a few of the questions that must be answered and the issues that must be properly accounted for, at minimum: The amount of conventional generation necessary when wind is producing nothing?
The amount of conventional generation necessary to infill the gap between when a 100MW wind project is producing, say, 50MW in one minute and, minutes later, only 40MW?
The amount and pace of conventional generation that must be withdrawn when that wind project increases its yield quickly, moving, say, from producing 10MW in one minute and, 15 minutes later, 80MW? This may not be consequential for any grid in terms of security, particularly large grids like the PJM with over 140,000MW of peak demand generation. But even this relatively trifling flux has cost and emissions consequences, which should be properly assessed. …Logic also dictates, in answer to these questions, that any grid must be able to support the entire range of wind flux–from zero to the highest installed wind capacity. Therefore, a grid must have a 1:1 compensatory generation for wind available at all times. …
Looking at the evidence provided on behalf of wind technology, which isat bestequivocal, and critical analyses like Bentek’s that expose the technology’s limitations, perhaps it’s fair to conclude by extending AWEA’s distasteful analogy. Those who claim that wind technology can abate meaningful levels of CO2 emissions would admire the three-pack a day guy who decides to improve his health by smoking four packs of filtered cigarettes instead.http://bit.ly/1S7xPrg

Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle
“In 2004, ethanol production from corn will generate 8 million tons of incremental CO2, over and above the amount of CO2 generated by burning gasoline with 115% of the calorific value of this ethanol. It next calculates the cumulative energy (available free energy) consumed in corn farming and ethanol production, and estimates the minimum amount of work necessary to restore the key non-renewable resources consumed by the industrial corn-ethanol cycle.This amount of work is compared with the maximum useful work obtained from the industrial corn-ethanol cycle. It appears that if the corn-ethanol energy is used to power a car engine, the minimum restoration work is about 6 times the maximum useful work from the cycle. This ratio drops down to 2 if an ideal fuel cell is used to process the ethanol. The article estimates the U.S. taxpayer subsidies of the industrial corn-ethanol cycle at $3.8 billion in 2004. The parallel subsidies by the environment are estimated at $1.8 billion in 2004. “http://bit.ly/1cH8uGw

“David Pimental from Cornell claimed that making a gallon of ethanol used 29 percent more energy than it provided.Moreover, it was alleged that ethanol increased evaporation of volatile organic compounds in the summer thus increasing, not reducing smog. Finally, life cycle analysis revealed that overall, allowing for how ethanol is produced from corn, e.g. diesel fuel used to drive tractors and harvesters, and fossil fuels burned to produce fertilizers and as feedstocks, and as feedstocks and energy to produce pesticides, ethanol actually increased air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, a Duke University study found that “to avoid creating greenhouse gases, it is better to leave land unfarmed in conservation reserves than to plow it up for corn to make biofuel.” …
A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looking at the total climate change and health costs from fuels found that corn-based ethanol equaled or exceeded the costs of gasoline;the combined climate-change and health costs were $469 million for gasoline,$472 million to $952 million for corn ethanol, and $123 million to $208 million for cellulosic ethanol.Cellulosic ethanol is less costly because its production emits fewer greenhouse gases than corn production and has minimal impacts on carbon sinks, air pollution and food prices.”http://bit.ly/1EQNyVd

“Moreover Gabriel was once the country’s environment minister and a devout believer in global warming and in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. …
This announcement is a DEATH-BLOW to the advocates of renewable energy such as Wind & Solar. One of the major problems with wind and solar is that the projects aren’t commercially viable without huge Govt subsidies including long-term contracts by energy utilities to pay 2-4 times the going wholesale electric rate for solar and wind generated power.
The mood at SMA Solar, which has been a huge benefactor of the renewable energy subsidies brought on by Germany’s EEG feed-in act, was somber and shock and Gabriel delivered the reality. Many in attendance seemed unable to fathom what Gabriel was unloading: the heady days at the green energy feeding trough are over – live with it.“
What a huge reversal of fate for the German renewables sector, as the German government was forced to bring in massive Coal Diggers (or as this story labels for picture “BRING ON THE DIRTY COAL MINING MONSTERS”).http://bit.ly/1IMZ4pj

““The truth is that the Energy U-Turn (“Energiewende”, the German scheme aimed at pushing the “renewable” share of electricity production to 80 % by 2050) is about to fail”
“The truth is that under all aspects, we have underestimated the complexity of the “Energiewende”
“The noble aspiration of a decentralized energy supply, of self-sufficiency! This is of course utter madness”in
“Anyway, most other countries in Europe think we are crazy”…
German customers now pay the second-highest electricity prices in Europe. At the same time, the task of stabilizing the grid against the massive erratic influx from solar and wind power plants that produce without regard for actual need has pushed the operators to their limits. Now already, with a combined share of just some 13 % of total electricity production, their unreliable input is massively imperiling the stability of the grid. “
This grid instability problem only occurs when the percentage of renewables one is attempting to employ in the grid climbs higher and higher.http://bit.ly/1AgUv5k

“But even if ethanol costs a lot, doesn’t it at least benefit the environment? Not necessarily. Because it’s an oxygenate, ethanol increaseslevels of nitrous oxides in the atmosphere and causes smog. Researchers are debating the extent to which it reduces greenhouse gases, with some estimates as low as 5%. Also, ethanol lags gasoline in fuel efficiency, and it requires fossil fuels like coal or gas to refine and transport it.”http://buswk.co/1JO7ETt

“By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years.Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%.This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.”
Mr. Pres.,if you one of those who believe that greenhouse gases are the reason for temperature increases, that should concern you, but I think it’s irrelevant because, of these links http://bit.ly/113CqGk, http://bit.ly/15KjDTg, http://bit.ly/1Jahv99, http://bit.ly/1SiOxpm , http://bit.ly/1GIglBH , and http://bit.ly/1KByEYL. For those who think that man-made CO2 is the scourge of the earth, you should watch this video regarding seats in the Dallas Cowboys Stadium as evidenced of how little man’s Anthropogenic Global Warming (ACW) influences climate, http://bit.ly/1xNPedR.
The below link the addresses the quoted text above.http://1.usa.gov/1IGNiwJ

“Thus, within the critical time frame for avoiding a climate catastrophe—the next couple of decades, according to the February 2007 United Nations report Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable—biofuel crops will only aggravate global climate disruption.”http://1.usa.gov/1Feg0Tt
“The fact that building and operating renewable power generatorsrequires more labor time than for conventional generators is a signal that the nation should not rush toward renewables in the hastethat so many are urging today. If a megawatt of solar capacity requires four times the workers as a megawatt of coal-fired power, building the solar plant makes the nation poorer, other things equal The public is worse off because it sacrifices the outputs that those workers could have produced had they been employed elsewhere.“
For those of us with even a smattering of economics training, this called the“opportunity cost”, and is the fault of most simple economic analyses, that proclaim to show increased jobs, like those that your administration has bragged about far too often.http://bit.ly/1FS9KE
“Moreover, ethanol burned in an engineproduces more than twice as much ozone as the equivalent amount of petrol. Ground-level ozone is a big cause of smog. And, while good at boosting a fuel’s octane rating, ethanol packs only two-thirds the energy per gallon of petrol. As a result, motorists get fewer miles per gallon using fuel blended with ethanol than with undiluted petrol. So, even if blended fuel is cheaper per gallon than petrol (thanks to ethanol’s subsidies), the overall cost of using it tends to be higher. “So, thank you Presidents Bush and Obama for giving the American public this wonderful treat of an inefficient fuel!http://econ.st/1AaIi24

“They claim that it would be almost 100 times more effective, and much less costly, to significantly reduce vehicle emissions through more stringent standards, and to increase CAFE standards on all cars and light trucks to over 40 miles per gallon as was done in Japan just a few years ago.With more than 60 nations having biofuel mandates, the competition between ethanol and food has become a moral issue. Groups like Oxfam and the Environmental Working Group oppose biofuelsbecause they push up food prices and disproportionately affect the poor.”http://onforb.es/1JQ76MZ

“Although, or because, wind provides only 0.2% of US electricity, the idol of wind evokes much worship. The basic fact of wind is that it provides about 1.2 watts per square metre or 12,000 watts per hectare of year-round average electric power. Consider, for example, the $212 million wind farm about 30 kilometres south of Lamar, CO, where 108 1.5 MWe wind turbines stand 80 metres tall, their blades sweeping to 115 metres.
The wind farm spreads over 4800 hectares. At 30% capacity, peak power density is the typical 1.2 watts per square metre.”…”Perhaps three to ten times more compact than biomass, a wind farm occupying about 770 square kilometres could produce as much energy as one 1000 MWe nuclear plant. To meet 2005 US electricity demand of about four million MWhr with around-the-clock-windwould have required wind farms covering over 780,000 square kilometres, about Texas plus Louisiana, or about 1.2 times the area of Alberta. Canada’s demand is about 10% of the USA and corresponds to about the area of New Brunswick.http://bit.ly/1JOqNVe

“As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.Five million acres of land set aside for conservation – more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined – have vanished on Obama’s watch.
Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.
Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can’t survive.”http://bit.ly/1L8m4P9
The dangers of having a must-take energy source in one’s portfolio.
“Second, the wind doesn’t blow all the time, so power utilities have found that in order to balance out the variable load from wind they have to invest in keeping fossil-fuel-burning plants on standby. When those plants are not running at full capacity they are not as efficient. Most calculations of the cost of wind power do not take into account the costs per kWh of keeping fossil plants on standby or running at reduced loads. But they should, because it is a real cost of adding clean, green, wind power to the grid “But wind power is allowed to ignore this cost.http://onforb.es/1IY5Zfs
“…State renewable portfolio standards (RPS) mandate that wind energy be considered a “must take” resource. As such, when wind blows, generation from coal and natural gas must be adjusted to accommodate wind generation. This adjustment, called cycling, is defined as the sudden increase or decrease in generation.Most coal plants are not designed to be cycled, and doing so makes their operations inefficient, increasing SO2, NOx and CO2 emissions.
Contrary to their stated goals, implementation of RPS in Colorado and Texas appear to be adding to the air pollution problem, especially in areas where older plants are cycled more frequently.This is particularly problematicwhen cycled coal facilities are located near major urban centers. …
This report, which examines four years of Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCO) hourly operational history, illustrates how coal cycling, which in part results from wind generation, negates the emission benefits of wind energy.Integrating an intermittent, must take resource, such as wind energy, requires PSCO to cycle its coal and natural gas-fired plants. The incidents of coal cycling have risen markedly with the introduction of 775 MW of wind capacity since 2007. …
The results of this study help explain why PSCO’s coal-fired plants located in the Denver non-attainment area have experienced an increase in SO2, NOX and CO2 over the past few years.Four of the five most frequently cycled coal plants are located in proximity to Denver. The results also suggest that this problem will worsen over time unless more gas generation is utilized to absorb wind generation variability. …Recommendations:Effective wind energy requires sufficient flexible natural gas generation in order to avoid cycling coal facilities.Enacting RPS’s that require more than 5-10% of wind energy for electricity generation will significantly add to emissionsunless more flexible natural gas generation is utilized. The report recommends:
1. Short term. (1-2 years)Limit the utilization of wind generation to that which can be offset by cycling existing natural gas facilities.
2. Long term (Beyond 2012)Utilities operating under RPS should consider adding significantly more combined cycle and combustion turbine gas plants to their generation mix. Adding more natural gas plants will reduce the need to cycle coal facilities in all but the most extreme situations.http://bit.ly/1LuZVg2

“38. Wind resources tend to be strongest and most predictable at night. During that time period, generation from coal comprises approximately 62% of the generation mix and gas-fired generation falls to 20% within the PSCo system, for example. Later in the night, baseload coal fired generation is often sufficient to meet the demand, and because it is the most cost effective it is used. However, it becomes the only resource available to absorb the “must-take” wind power and thus PSCo has cycled its coal facilities.26http://bit.ly/1LO3EWd
The disaster that is biofuels

“But as we’ve looked at biofuels more closely, we’ve concluded that they’re not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles) of currently harvested U.S. cropland produced ethanol, it wouldn’t supply all of the gasoline and diesel fuel we nowburn for transport, and it would supply only about halfof the needs for the year 2025. And the effects on land and agriculture would be devastating.“http://wapo.st/1Pp6SmR

“Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian….
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.”

“2) An obscure federal law – 40 CFR 600.510-08(c)(2)(iii) et seq. – enables automakers to grossly understate the fuel consumption of an E85-compatible vehicle. The measured fuel economy is divided by a fudge factor of 0.15, resulting in a vehicle which actually achieves, say, 20 miles per gallon of E85 credited with achieving 133 miles per gallon, when the automaker’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) is calculated. The result is that each automaker can manufacturemore gas guzzlers while complying with CAFE law. “http://bit.ly/1ENGYOg“New Battles to Fight
So where does this leave the biofuel critic, or optimist? In no man’s land, as usual. Using 120 million acres for biofuel production is probably not sustainable and would impinge on food and environmental needs. Using 36 million acres sounds better, but if the feedstock is not grown with conservation in mind (i.e., if it degrades rather than enhances the land), then 36 million is far too much as well.
Necessity is the mother of invention, so the best way to make “sustainable biofuels” a reality is to give the inventors (the biofuel producers) precise standards they have to live up to—and to let them decide how to meet the standards. Only then, after all the standards are met, will we be able to accurately calculate the true volume of sustainably produced fuel. Creating clear frameworks to guide biomass “farmers” and biofuel producers will ultimately be more useful than attempting to make global estimates of how much land will be needed to meet our bioenergy goals.
Regulations to keep biofuels from causing more harm than good could include requirements to protect intact ecosystems and restore degraded lands, as well as limitations on chemical inputs like pesticides and inorganic fertilizers. Even just rewarding biofuel producers on the basis of their fuels’ lifecycle GHG emissions would go a long way toward reaching sustainability goals, if these measurements are done well and fairly. “http://bit.ly/1EPtiDuAnd the damage to wildlife due to the major forms of renewable energy.
“By chance (if you believe in coincidences), a timely government study claims wind farms will kill “only” 1.4 million birds yearly by 2030 (1). …Dr. Shawn Smallwood’s 2004 study, spanning four years, estimated that California’s Altamont Pass wind “farm” killedan average of 116 Golden Eagles annually (2). This adds up to 2,900 dead “goldies” since it was built 25 years ago. …
Smallwood also estimated that Altamont killed an average of 300 red-tailed hawks, 333 American kestrels and 380 burrowing owls annually – plus even more non-raptors, including 2,526 rock doves and 2,557 western meadowlarks. …
the Spanish Ornithological Society (SEO/Birdlife) reviewed actual carcass counts from 136 monitoring studies. They concluded that Spain’s 18,000 wind turbines are killing 6-18 million birds and bats yearly …

Extrapolating that and similar (little publicized) German and Swedish studies, 39,000 U.S. wind turbines would not be killing “only” 440,000 birds (USFWS, 2009) or “just” 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats (Smallwood, 2013) (4), but 13-39 million birds and bats every year!

Wildlife expert Jim Wiegand has documented how areas searched under wind turbines are still confined to 200-foot radiuses, even though modern monster turbines catapult 90% of bird and bat carcasses much further. Windfarm owners, operating under voluntary(!) USFWS guidelines, commission studies that search much-too-small areas, look only once every 30-90 days, ensuring that scavengers remove most carcasses, and ignore wounded birds that happen to be found within search perimeters (5)By 2030, the United States plans to produce 20% of its electricity from wind. That’s nearly six times as much as today, from three or four times as many turbines, striking more flying creatures due to their bigger size (even the mendacious study predicting 1.4 million bird kills recognizes this).
Personally, this is one thing I cannot abide by, killing our Eagles, raptors and bats.http://bit.ly/1QYbGg6
“Wind turbines only last for ‘half as long as previously thought’, according to a new study. But even in their short lifespans, those turbines can do a lot of damage. Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and batsacross the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change. …Second, because the ongoing obsession with climate change means that many environmentalists are turning a blind eye to the ecological costs of renewable energy. What they clearly don’t appreciate — for they know next to nothing about biology — is that most of the species they claim are threatened by ‘climate change’ have already survived 10 to 20 ice ages, and sea-level rises far more dramatic than any we have experienced in recent millennia or expect in the next few centuries.Climate change won’t drive those species to extinction; well-meaning environmentalists might.
Though I started out neutral on renewable energy, I’ve since seen the havoc wreaked on wildlife by wind power, hydro power, biofuels and tidal barrages. The environmentalists who support such projects do so for ideological reasons. What few of them have in their heads, though, is the consolation of science. …This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservativeif you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’ Because wind farms tend to be built on uplands, where there are good thermals, they kill a disproportionate number of raptors. In Australia, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle is threatened with global extinction by wind farms. In north America, wind farms are killing tens of thousands of raptorsincluding golden eagles and America’s national bird, the bald eagle. In Spain, the Egyptian vulture is threatened, as too is the Griffon vulture — 400 of which were killed in one year at Navarra alone.Norwegian wind farms kill over ten white-tailed eagles per year and the population of Smøla has been severely impacted by turbines built against the opposition of ornithologists. …You hear similar nonsense from environmentalists about so-called habitat ‘mitigation’. “Definitely worth reading!http://bit.ly/1EoJ9r3

“According to a 2013 peer-reviewedstudy, America’s wind farms killmore than 573,000 birds each year,including 83,000 raptors—such as eagles, hawks and falcons.
That doesn’t have to be. Audubon has long worked with the wind industry to incorporate the best technology and siting information to build wind farms that pose less risk to birds and other wildlife. We believe that new technologies and better siting must be combined with the necessary government oversight to ensure that the wind industry is taking every step possible to avoid unnecessary bird deaths.
The Interior Department has walked away from years of balancing the need for conservation and renewable energy—and from conservation partners willing to work toward a win-win approach.
While the Interior Department says that it will review wind farms every five years even under the 30-year-permits, the agency in charge of doing the monitoring—the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—told us this year it doesn’t have the resources to review sites every five years. That’s precisely why it asked its parent agency to extend the permitting period.
In fact, under the two key pieces of legislation that protect birds, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, the death of a single bird without a permit is illegal.Yet, to date, the Interior Department has brought only one case against a wind-energy company.It takes more than a symbolic action to prove that there is a real environmental cop on the beat….
Despite considerable pressure from Audubon and other conservation organizations, the Interior Department said creating a sound processwould be too hard. They wouldn’t answer two simple questions:how much would itcost to actually enforce the law; and would the agency be willing to begin doing smart planning now, even with incomplete information. Both of those questions could have led to a breakthrough. Instead, we’ve been stonewalled….
It’s only been a few years since the magnificent bald eagle was brought back from the brink of extinction and taken offthe Endangered Species List. It remains one of the great conservation achievements of the past couple of decades. To backtrack now on protections for our national symbol is irresponsible.
As always, Audubon will work with the government and other partners to find balanced and reasonable solutions. We know that won’t always be easy or comfortable for some of our constituents who don’t want to see a single bird killed,or to others focused on the extreme threat of climate change.But we also know that a free pass to kill the national bird—cloaked in vague assurances of protection—isn’t balanced or reasonable.

Solar Energy: Not So Clean After All.
Solar energy turns sunlight into electrical power. What’s not to like? Well, there is that whole process of manufacturing solar panels, which requires a great deal of energy. All that energy requires generation via means other than solar power — usually coal.
“In the case of silicon-based solar panels, which are the most common type, the silicon material requires melting silica rock in roughly 3,000-degree F ovens,” notes The Data Center Journal. “That energy, however, typically comes from coal plants, meaning that although solar panels may produce no emissions when in operation, they indirectly produce a fair amount during manufacturing.”
And what to do with the solar panels when their productive life is over in about 25 years or so? And what about all the waste chemicals generated by the solar panel manufacturing process? The Union of Concerned Scientists write that the photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturing process “includes a number of hazardous materials,” similar to “those used in the general semiconductor industry,” such as “hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, and acetone.”If we’re talking about thin-film PV cells, it’s worse, as UCS explains, since those have “more toxic materials than those used in traditional silicon photovoltaic cells, including gallium arsenide, copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, and cadmium-telluride.”

“From Nature World News:
The last thing you’d likely expect is for a new experimental array to literally light nearly 130 birds in mid-flight on fire.

And yet, that’s exactly what happened near Tonopah, Nevada last month during tests of the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. …
Unfortunately, about two hours into the test, engineers and biologists on site started noticing “streamers” – trails of smoke and steam caused by birds flying directly into the field of solar radiation. What moisture was on them instantly vaporized, and some instantly burst into flames – at least, until they began to frantically flap away. An estimated 130 birds were injured or killed during the test.http://bit.ly/1AbtS22
“Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume from birds that ignite in midair. Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year reported an average of one “streamer” every two minutes. They’re urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version until the extent of the deaths is assessed. Annual estimates range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.“Seems like some environmentalists are concerned by this, as I am.http://nbcnews.to/1HoeC1k

“In 2013, solar accounted for about 0.2 percent of the net electricity produced in the United States, according to the Institute for Energy Research. That same year,solar accounted for 3.1 percent of Spain’stotal electricity, according to REE.
Still, Spain’s renewable energy story has not been all roses. The country’s aggressive goals have been heavily subsidized by its government, and the government has fallen into economic distress as a result. Specifically, the New York Times reported in 2013 that Spain’s tariff deficit had built up a cumulative debt of about €26 billion ($35 billion). Since then, however, the country has slashed its subsidies, putting the bulk of costs back on the power utilities themselves. “http://bit.ly/1ec9yTV

“Once touted as the embodiment of progress, wealth and sustainability,the industry is now seen as an unwanted and costly extravagance. …
The decree’s impact has all but erased public support for renewable power, raising alarms in the industry inside and outside Spain.“We’ve gone from misery to ruin,” said Jaume Margarit, director of the Association of Renewable Energy Producers….
In an embarrassing admission, the government said last month that despite past consumer price increases for power and attempts at reform, the tariff deficit this year would reach €2.5 billion to €3 billion. ..
The overall goal of ending the tariff deficit has broad support, including fromthe renewableenergy industry,but nobody is happy with how the government has proposed to split the unavoidable economic pain. “http://nyti.ms/1Fp3Gjd

The benefits of electricity produced from fossil fuels versus wind energy

“It’s not just that coal-fired power plants can be plunked down pretty much wherever we want them. It’s also that watt for watt they are far more compact than their equivalent in wind turbines.

“Let’s take a 500-megawatt power plant which by itself can power a city of 300,000. (A megawatt is one million watts.) It will sit astride a fairly large plot of land. A coal-fired plant near me is just under that capacity (495 MW) and sits on about 300 acres. Most of that land, however, is essentially devoted to undeveloped transmission right-of-way filled with ponds, woods and streams. Only a small portion is covered by plant facilities including coal storage. I estimate less than 30 acres….

For new wind projects huge 5-megawatt wind generators are just now being deployed. If we take these as typical (and they are not), then using an estimate of the direct land footprint for wind towers of 0.38 acres per tower, we find that we’d need 100 towers covering 38 acres. But wind turbines run at only about 30 percent capacity because the wind doesn’t blow all the time. This compares to about 70 percent capacity for coal-fired power plants. So we need to multiply 100 towers by about 2 1/3 to get the number of towers we’d need to match the operating capacity of one coal-fired plant. That means we’d need about 233 towers with a direct land footprint of 87 acres. That doesn’t seem too bad. And, the land under the turbines is still available for farming and other purposes. The overall direct effects on the land and water are certainly less when compared to the coal plant. …But we’re not done. The spacing between towers is typically at least five diameters of the rotor. That doesn’t sound like much. But for the 5-megawatt towers in this example, the spacing would be 2,065 feet times 232–we don’t need to separate the last tower from another tower beyond it. Then we’d add the diameter of the rotors–413 feet times 233–and we get a distance equivalent to about 110 miles.So, we’d need a line of 5-megawatt turbines stretching 110 miles. In theory, we’d want to split them up and put them in various locations in which the wind blows hardest at different times. But the total length of the line would still be at least 110 miles. “

Lisa Margonelli’s article in the Atlantic regarding Clean Energy’s Dirty Little Secret describes how China controls 70% of the world’s market of rare earth metal oxides, and they recently cut their exports to increase production in-house.““If we don’t think this through, we could be trading a troubling dependence on Middle Eastern oil for a troubling dependence on Chinese neodymium.” “Mr. Irving Mintzer has a very wise thought. indeed.http://theatln.tc/1AoMbjV

“Supply challenges for five rare-earth metals – dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium – may affect clean energy technology deployment in the years ahead, the DOE says. …
Using a methodology adapted from the National Academy of Sciences, the report includes criticality assessments for 16 elements based on their importance to clean energy and supply risk.”http://bit.ly/1FN38Rp

““To provide most of our power through renewables would take hundreds of times the amount of rare earth metals that we are mining today,” said Thomas Graedel, Clifton R. Musser Professor of Industrial Ecology and professor of geology and geophysics at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “
Mr. Pres. I can’t imagine you wanting to have China control either our national security nor the nation’s energy production.http://bit.ly/1Gu5ICc

“Notably, the United States has a considerable rare earths supply; what it lacks
is an efficient permitting process to attract investment and promote extraction.”

But, this is no different than the permitting process for oil and gas drilling, isn’t that true Mr. Obama?

The Daily Mail recently reported that the University of Edinburgh found “for onshore wind, the monthly ‘load factor’ of turbines – a measure of how much electricity they generate as a percentage of how much they could produce if on at full power all the time – dropped from a high of 24 per cent in the first year after construction, to just 11 per cent after 15 years.”That’s a 55 percent drop, for you dinosaurs who still think that is important — and that is just for turbines still working….How long can that last? Ask that question of a True Believer at your own peril. They say making money is no longer the point of being in business; saving the planet is.”

“According to recent estimates,there are currently 14,000 abandoned wind farms dotting the landscape in the U.S.
Hawaii, for example, has 37 abandoned wind turbines at one site and there are five other abandoned wind sites in the Hawaiian Islands.
In California, there are thousands of such abandoned sites, including Altamont Pass, Techachapin and San Gorgonio — all considered perfect spots for wind turbines.Second, when government subsidies stop, the projects die. Third, wind power has proven to be unreliable as a consistent source of power. There’s either too little wind, too much wind, or it’s too cold to operate them. …
It is unlikely that the Obama Administration will let facts get in the way of their war against fossil fuels and their love affair with solar and wind power.Expect more taxpayer dollars to be flushed down the rathole of solar and wind boondoggles.Expect to see more abandoned wind farms in the future — as long as Obama remains in office and the EPA is run by the climate alarmist zealot Lisa Jackson.

Well,the name is changed to protect the innocent, but their ideology towards renewable energy is still in place under Gina McCarthyhttp://bit.ly/1GR98fi

“It is also worth noting that wind farming on an industrial scale has the potential to impact global climate by altering the atmosphere’s ability to transport heat and moisture, critically affecting global weather and precipitation patterns by interrupting the natural circulation of moisture by wind[21]. For wind energy to truly provide a reliable alternative to current power generation techniques, it would have to be implemented at a massive industrial scale, at the risk of disastrous environmental consequence. The speculated far-reaching consequences of this impact range from changing hurricane patterns off the coast of Mexico, to having significant downstream effects on cyclones in the North Atlantic….
Many of the purported benefits of wind energy, such as the lack of harmful emissions associated with conventional power generation techniques, have yet to prove themselves[12]. It is true that wind turbines on their own do not emit carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in operation, meaning that on the surface, at least, wind energy has a relatively small carbon footprint[24]. They do, however, rely on the use of rare earth metals, which require mining and are, as the name suggests, of limited supply.This poses a problem for a renewable energy technology to remain ‘renewable’ when it is dependent on a finite resource. The magnets integral to the operation of wind turbines include neodymium, terbium and dysprosium, three rare earth metals that, as yet, have no equivalent substitute[20]. Some harmful emission like CO2 are still released in the manufacture, transportation, and maintenance of wind turbines[12], but even at its worst, a wind turbine is likely still minimally damaging to the environment. …http://bit.ly/1GvBmzs

The exorbitant costs involved in developing and maintaining wind farms is increasingly resulting in the abandonment of completed wind farm projects. Approximately 4,500 wind turbines have been built and abandoned just in California, while many others are unable to function at maximum capacity due to previously unforeseen problems. The Altamont Pass Wind Farm of Northern California, for example, was once the largest wind farm on earth, but the turbines must now be shut down during four months of the year to protect migrating birds….

On a broader scale, some sources have even gone so far as to point out that there has been “zero scientific empirical proof provided by the wind industry to support their claims of consequential CO2 reduction,” (Droz, 2012) while others suggest that actual CO2 savings from wind energy have been miniscule, if not actively detrimental. The Colorado energy market, for example, in having to accommodate the use of inefficient and unreliable wind energy into its power grid (and continuously balancing the grid on a second-by-second basis with fossil-fuel-generated electricity), found that forcing the inclusion of wind energy actually resulted in having to operate coal-burning power generators at a lower state of efficiency than they would have otherwise, inadvertently resulting in the release of even more harmful emissions[2].

“The biggest user of heavy rare earths in the years ahead could be large wind turbines, which need much lighter magnets for the five-ton generators at the top of ever-taller towers. Vestas, a Danish company that has become the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, said that prototypes for its next generation used dysprosium, and that the company was studying the sustainability of the supply. Goldwind, the biggest Chinese turbine maker, has switched from conventional magnets to rare-earth magnets….

“…There was a reason wind power went out of fashion historically while other power generation techniques flourished: it just wasn’t as efficient. Truth be told, despite many advancements and a whole lot of funding for wind energy over the last two decades, it is still inefficient. “http://bit.ly/1GvBmzs

“…While it is true solar and wind energy have not yet made themselves a viable, financially sound alternative to coal-fired power plants – without the help of massive government subsidies – their industry has hardly suffered while lawmakers try to do what is right for Ohio. …
If renewable energy advocates are looking for sympathy because they have not experienced the explosive growth to which they believed they were entitled, with the help of government, they should look elsewhere. Ohio lawmakers were correct in attempting to slow the bleeding in the coal industry caused by the war on coal and affordable electricity. “http://bit.ly/1BK0DUlFeatured ArticlesWind Energy Controversies: Environment, Health and CommunityRead the article in PDF.Wind energy is widely cited as the fastest-growing source of energy in the world today[24]. For anyone who has witnessed wind turbines sprouting up on the horizon like dandelions over the last ten years or so, this is no surprise. For many others, this development has been less localized to the horizon than to their own backyards, often without community consultation or thoughtful implementation.
Wind energy carries with it an abundance of hopes and expectations: that it will power our vehicles, decentralise and diversify our power grids, replace coal-fired power plants, eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels, and essentially save the world from the catastrophic global warming mess that we’ve gotten it into[21].
That’s a lot to ask of a technology that, despite technically exiting on a small scale for centuries, is actually still in its infancy.There was a reason wind power went out of fashion historically while other power generation techniques flourished: it just wasn’t as efficient. Truth be told, despite many advancements and a whole lot of funding for wind energy over the last two decades, it is still inefficient.
Wind power is dependent on wind speed, turbine size, and air density[8]. The bigger the wind turbine, the more power it is capable of generating, hence the behemoths we see today (which can range from 200 to 400 feet to the tip of the rotor[12]). The theoretical limit of 60% to a windmill’s efficiency[8] is largely necessary (wind must continue past the wind turbine, after all), but this is still a significant limitation that doesn’t even begin to address the additional problem that these turbines are estimated to not function at all in 25% of cases—as many as 1 in 4 wind turbines, whether they appear to be rotating or not, simply do nothing[14].Many of the purported benefits of wind energy, such as the lack of harmful emissions associated with conventional power generation techniques, have yet to prove themselves[12]. It is true that wind turbines on their own do not emit carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in operation, meaning that on the surface, at least, wind energy has a relatively small carbon footprint[24]. They do, however, rely on the use of rare earth metals, which require mining and are, as the name suggests, of limited supply. This poses a problem for a renewable energy technology to remain ‘renewable’ when it is dependent on a finite resource. The magnets integral to the operation of wind turbines include neodymium, terbium and dysprosium,three rare earth metals that, as yet, have no equivalent substitute[20]. Some harmful emission like CO2 are still released in the manufacture, transportation, and maintenance of wind turbines[12], but even at its worst, a wind turbine is likely still minimally damaging to the environment. All of this would be understandable, if not laudable, if wind energy were actually efficient and effective as a renewable power source. It certainly has the potential to result in reduced fossil fuel consumption, and less water and air pollution. Whether it will live up to this potential on the scale we need it to, however, remains to be seen.
So far, what we have seen is that wind turbines do not last as long as promised, they require far more maintenance than anyone had anticipated, and they don’t produce as much energy as hoped[14]. In many cases, the cost of repairs to existing turbines has proven to be more expensive than replacement, as was the case with the 37-turbine Kamaoa Wind Farm in Hawaii.
The exorbitant costs involved in developing and maintaining wind farms is increasingly resulting in the abandonment of completed wind farm projects. Approximately 4,500 wind turbines have been built and abandoned just in California, while many others are unable to function at maximum capacity due to previously unforeseen problems. The Altamont Pass Wind Farm of Northern California, for example, was once the largest wind farm on earth, but the turbines must now be shut down during four months of the year to protect migrating birds.
Currently, wind power accounts for about 0.2% of the world’s energy demands[21]. Initial estimates posited that wind power could provide the planet with a total of 68 terawatts of power (to put this into perspective, consider that we currently use an estimated 17 TW per year worldwide), but these estimates have since been downgraded to closer to 18 TW, because wind energy isn’t the easy solution we were all hoping for; and could, in fact, have disastrous environmental consequences of its own if employed at the massive industrial scale that would be needed for wind power to provide energy at significant levels.
In the US, wind power generated about 3.5% of the country’s electricity in 2012[16]. Since 2007, almost 40% of all the new electricity capacity in the states has been in the form of wind energy, though the actual electricity produced by wind power still accounts for a very small percentage of the country’s power generation. Also as of 2012, wind power provided 2.3% of Canada’s electricity demands, with a goal of 25% by 2025[15]. In Ontario alone, wind energy is expected to generate 10% of Ontario’s electricity by 2030[1]. And as a result of Ontario’s 2009 Green Energy Act (an attempt to meet these lofty goals) a proliferation of haphazard wind turbine projects sprouted up throughout the province[13]. In its early years, it was almost taboo to imply that wind energy was in any way faulted.Saying you didn’t like the idea of wind energy was like saying you didn’t like puppies. However, now that wind energy has reached its awkward teenage years, that unquestioning support has dwindled. Ontario is the perfect example of this renewable energy unrest.
The Green Energy Act, with all its good intentions, gave the green energy industry license to installwind, solar and biogas systems wherever they chose[10], and required the serious implementation of wind energy into the infrastructure of the province—without requiring the permission or input of the municipalities that were to host it…because who doesn’t love wind energy? As it turns out, jumping onboard the wind energy train without due consideration of the potential drawbacks did not go over well with many Ontario communities, resulting in protests, outrage, and declining public standing of renewable energy. This wasn’t just because the turbine dandelions were considered a blight on an otherwise idyllic landscape. Wind farms present real problems, ranging from environmental and health concerns, to community unrest.Environment
One of the most commonly cited environmental concerns related to wind energy has to do with avian mortality rates.The American Bird Conservancy estimates that wind turbines kill between 10 and 40 thousand birds per year[5]. This is a huge number of birds, but it is also important to consider this number in context. Estimates in Toronto, for example, suggest that about 10,000 birds die per year between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. due to collisions with brightly lit office towers. Similarly, buildings and windows are estimated to kill up to 980 million birds each year in the United States (with another 80 million dying in vehicle-related collisions). Power lines are cited to be responsible for 130 million avian deaths per year in the US, communications towers contribute to another 4-5 million deaths, pesticides to 67 million, and the innocuous house cat to an estimated 100 million.
That is not to say that the 10-40 thousand deaths by wind turbines are inconsequential, of course. In some ways it is not a fair comparison—the birds colliding with office towers in Toronto are not necessarily the same birds being killed by rural wind turbines.Ten thousand dead pigeonsmay notcreate much of a dent in the overall pigeon population, but 10,000 deathsin a smaller or more fragile avian community could have far more serious and far-reaching impacts.So while it is important to consider wind-turbine-related avian mortality rates in context, and not fall into the trap of overstating the severity of the problem, we still cannot disregard the argument entirely.Birds are not the only causalities; bat populations are taking a hit as well[10], and while this may not seem like a big problem to city-dwellers who may not have ever seen a bat in their lives, the impact of their deaths has broad consequences, ranging from agricultural losses to significant alterations in the local ecosystem[3](fewer bats, for example, typically results in more mosquitoes, resulting in the spread of more mosquito-borne diseases—and maybe such a correlation is a touch melodramatic, but it does illustrate the point that anything we do to the environment, even the most well-meaning of alterations, can have vast and detrimental impacts in delicate ecosystems that eventually cycle back to affect us). Estimates suggest that agricultural losses in North America related to current bat mortality rates (due to wind turbines and white-noise syndrome, the two greatest threats bats face today) could cost $3.7 billion per year[3].
The impact of wind turbines on local wildlife has led some facilities (such as those in Searsburg, Vermont) to institute monitoring programs in order to analyse and, theoretically, prevent some of this damage[12]. Others, like Northern California’s Altamont Pass Wind Farm[14], require that the facilities be out of operation during certain times of the year when avian migration activity is at its peak, preventing avian mortality, but at the expense of much of the facility’s efficiency.
On a broader scale, some sources have even gone so far as to point out that there has been “zero scientific empirical proof provided by the wind industry to support their claims of consequential CO2 reduction,” (Droz, 2012) while others suggestthat actual CO2 savings from wind energy have been miniscule, if not actively detrimental.The Colorado energy market, for example, in having to accommodate the use of inefficient and unreliable wind energy into its power grid (and continuously balancing the grid on a second-by-second basis with fossil-fuel-generated electricity), found that forcing the inclusion of wind energy actually resulted in having to operate coal-burning power generators at a lower state of efficiency than they would have otherwise, inadvertently resulting in the release of even more harmful emissions[2]. “This report, sponsored by the Independent Producers Association of Mountain States, concludes that the emissions benefits of renewable energy are not being realized as planned based on examination of four years of Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCO) operational history. Integrating erratic and unpredictable wind resources with established coal and natural gas generation resources requires PSCO to cycle its coal and natural gas fired plants. Cycling coal plants to accommodate wind generation makes the plants operate inefficiently, which drives up emissions. Moreover, when they are not operated consistently at their designed temperatures, the variability causes problems with the way they interact with their associated emission control technologies, frequently causing erratic emission behavior that can last for several hours before control is regained. Ironically, using wind to a degree that forces utilities to temporarily reduce their coal generation results in greater SO2, NOX and CO2 than would have occurred if less wind energy were generated and coal generation were not impacted.” -Bentek Energy, 2010
It is also worth noting that wind farming on an industrial scale has the potential to impact global climate by altering the atmosphere’s ability to transport heat and moisture, critically affecting global weather and precipitation patterns by interrupting the natural circulation of moisture by wind[21]. For wind energy to truly provide a reliable alternative to current power generation techniques, it would have to be implemented at a massiveindustrial scale, at the risk of disastrous environmental consequence. The speculated far-reaching consequences of this impact range from changing hurricane patterns off the coast of Mexico, to having significant downstream effects on cyclones in the North Atlantic.Less dire, but still significant findings include a 2012 study by the journal Nature, which found that large wind farms in west-central Texas have already warmed nighttime temperatures over last nine years by one degree.This is not to say that wind energy does not have the potential to be highly beneficial to the environment, but rather to point out that it is not a cure-all for our environmental problems and should therefore not be treated as such. This is an industry with as much potential for environmental harm as good, and it needs to be regulated accordingly.

HealthNoise is the leading complaint from those living near grid-scale wind projects[23]. The impact of this noise is the subject of ongoing scientific and policy debate worldwide.
When it comes to wind turbines specifically, noise can be generated by the wind turbine itself while in operation, the facility’s transformer station (when applicable), as well as the vehicle traffic between turbines necessary for maintenance. The two primary types of noise related to wind turbines include mechanical noise (from the motor and gearbox of the turbine’s nacelle), and the aerodynamic noise produced by wind passing over the blades as well as the passage of the blades in front of the turbine tower[15]. Early designs generated a considerable amount of low frequency vibration because blades were placed downwind of the tower, forcing wind to travel past the tower before striking the blades. Modern wind turbine designs have to some extent been able to overcome these noise challenges, but are also considerably larger than many of their predecessors and continue to generate noise complaints from their host communities.A review of the current literature on the subject shows that health effects related to wind turbine noise have been found to include a broad range of symptoms. The largest reported concern is sleep disruption, while other symptoms include headaches, migraines, ear pain, and psychological distress[20]. Wind turbines tend to be found in rural communities where ambient noise is typically low, and may therefore have a more pronounced effect on residents unused to noise[15].
The Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine found that turbines located too close to residents can have a negative effect on their physical, mental, and social well-being, and present a potential cause of health problems[20]. The fact that wind turbines produce noise is indisputable, but what is hotly disputed is whether or not the noise produced is actually capable of causing health problems for those exposed to it.
Some wind industry supporters argue that the health concerns reported by individuals living in close proximity to wind farms are merely psychosomatic, resulting from negative media attention around turbines[7]. This argument stems from some intriguing studies that concluded health problems associated with wind turbine noise tended to only be reported after negative media attention began to surround wind turbines, while not occurring prior to this attention in spite of the continuous presence of the wind turbines.While negative media attention around a particular subject does tend to spur complaints, and these complaints may merely be the result of human suggestibility or hypochondria, it is also possible that such media attention encourages increased awareness of a legitimate, existing problem.Historically, people certainly loved their lead-based household and beauty products, but just because increased public awareness of lead poisoning accompanied the presentation of lead-related health problems does not mean that their symptoms were not real, or that lead exposure was not a real concern.The province of Ontario requires wind turbines to be a minimum of 550 metres from nearby residences[20], but many have argued that this distance is still too close. In Ontario alone, the Ministry of Environmenthas been cited to have received over 200 health complaints related to wind turbines, and at least one wind company has been the subject of a 1.5 million dollar lawsuit over alleged health impacts[7]. Exposure to wind turbine noise may not be as problematic as coating one’s face in thick layers of lead-based makeup for years, but to disregard the public’s health concerns is at best short-sighted, and at worst dangerously irresponsible.Due to the indirect and insidious nature of noise on health, and the youth of the wind industry, there remains limited scientific research in the area of potential health impacts, a problem which will take time to address comprehensively as longitudinal studies will be required to reach any firm conclusions. Until then, sound level limits (for Ontario, at least) currently fall under provincial jurisdiction[15].
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” and, “the extent to which an individual or a group is able, on the one hand, to realize aspirations and to satisfy needs, and on the other, to change or cope with the environment” (WHO, 1999)One interesting study[4], by the Netherlands’ University of Groningen, found that support for wind turbines in the country was sharply divided between those complaining about the noise and those for whom noise was not an issue. What was interesting about this particular study was that the complaints were shown to have very little correlation with proximity to wind turbines. Contrary to expectations, many of the closest residents did not find the noise to be problematic at all. It turns out that many of these unbothered residents were also the ones receiving direct economic benefits from the power produced by the windmills. The opposite was found to be true for those who did complain (some reporting annoyance even at 30 decibels, while many of those in the other group found no reason to be concerned by 45 decibels of wind turbine noise).This finding suggests that involving the local residents in wind energy projects by providing some direct benefit from the presence of wind turbines in their communities could significantly alleviate some of the unrest that has come to be associated with these projects.

Community

Widespread community discord surrounding wind farms has prompted the development of a variety of anti-wind groups, particularly in Ontario. Wind Concerns Ontario[17], an organization that compiles and maintains a list of municipalities unwilling to host wind farm projects, is one of the more vocal examples of grass-roots protests aimed at the province’s aggressive promotion of wind power. They have called the Liberal government’s seven years of wind powerdevelopment“a disaster for rural Ontario.”Anti-wind billboards and driveway signs are increasingly common in many communities, largely due to the resentments bred by the wind industry’s general lack of consultation with host communities[1].Due to the nature of wind, wind turbines are more suited to particular regions (such as the coast) and require a significant amount of space to operate, meaning that communities in an ideal wind-farm location frequently find themselves the unwilling hosts of large-scale wind energy projects that take over their space.It takes more space for renewables to produce the same amount of energy as fossil-fuel power generation due to lower power density[5].It has been posited that off-shore wind may be the solution to community concerns and space requirements[1], though many jurisdictions currently maintain a moratorium on off-shore wind farms.Until things change in this regard and more suitable locations are found for wind farm projects, they remain in the public eye, and the public’s backyard.As a result, the presence of wind turbines (especially the large-scale facilities) has also prompted increased community concern over property devaluation due to the perceived stigma attached to these developments[13].Various recent studies have been conducted defending both sides of this debate. One study by Ontario’s government-appointed property assessment body, the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC)[19], examined the effects of industrial wind turbines (defined as having a capacity of at least 1.5 megawatts, consistent with Health Canada’s definition), and concluded that there was no statistically significant impact on sale prices of residential properties in these market areas resulting from proximity to turbines. This study was both peer-reviewed and rigorous[13], but directly contradicts other studies and local reports that have found the presence of wind turbines can decrease property values by up to 35% compared to surrounding homes[19].It remains to be seen which side will win this debate, though both sides have certainly claimed victory already. The fact of the matter is that whether or not wind energy is having real detrimental effects on residents of host communities, there is no question that the perceived detrimental effects are influencing the public’s willingness to embrace wind energy and join in the unquestioning devotion of theGreen Energy True Believers.

Conclusions

Including capital and operating costs, according to theU.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), wind power currently costs 8.2 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh)[16]. This can be compared to advanced clean-coal plants and nuclear power, both of which come in at 11 cents per kWh, and advanced natural gas-burning plants at only 6.3 cents per kWh.”

Forbes magazine indicates that this estimate is grossly inaccurate, as “A fascinating new report by George Taylor and Tom Tanton at the American Tradition Institute called “The Hidden Costs of Wind Electricity” asserts that the cost of wind power is significantly understated by the EIA’s numbers.In fact, says Taylor, generating electricity from wind costs triple what it does from natural gas.”

“The study found a correlation between severe sensations experienced by the small group of residents studied and the power output of the turbines at Cape Bridgewater in Victoria.

The Cooper report has been hailed internationally as representing a breakthrough in the study of wind turbines and possible impacts.”http://bit.ly/1etjc4o

“But once bitten – twice shy – the Waterloo residents also brought in acousticians from the University of Adelaide to run the sound studies at Waterloo in parallel with the disgraceful EPA work. This Channel Seven news story covers it. “http://bit.ly/1CbfVBE
“When travelling throughout Southern Ontario this summer one can’t help but notice the proliferation of wind turbines. After the Green Energy Act and the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program were enacted in 2009, large scale wind farms sprang up across the province driven by a desire to increase clean, renewable energy in the supply mix. You may also notice the growing discontent in communities near turbines. Anti-wind billboards and driveway signs are becoming increasingly common in many towns located near energy projects.
As noted in Thomas Walkom’s recent article in the Toronto Star, municipal anger has boiled over and the provincial Liberals’ rural support has dwindled to virtual non-existence. The government belatedly decided to change the rules in late May, granting municipalities the ability to comment on proposed wind farms and receive tax revenue from them. However, the damage has been done, and many town councils, such as Kincardine, have passed motions declaring their communities unwilling hosts for additional wind farms. Looking ahead to 2014, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has 26 large-scale wind farms scheduled to come online without feedback from the host municipalities. Opposition efforts to take the matter to the Environmental Review Tribunal have been met with defeat, further inflaming rural residents.
This summer the Ministry of Energy will begin public consultations for its Long-Term Energy Plan, but given that many Ontarians are vacationing the timing is questionable. Under the 2010 plan, wind energy was expected to generate 10 per cent of Ontario’s electricity by 2030, about 19.6 terawatt hours. Given the current political climate and anti-wind sentiments, it will be difficult for the government to move ahead with its proposals.http://bit.ly/1QVTtDo

“Just think, in South Carolina, power company Scana and its partners are investing about $11 billion to construct two 1,100 mw nuclear reactors on roughly 1,000 acres. To get the same amount of electricity out of wind (remember that turbines operate at an average of less than 50% capacity because of wind’s intermittancy) and you’d need more than 1,700 turbines stretched across 200,000 acres, for an upfront investment of $8.8 billion.The nukes might cost more upfront, but they last longer, they provide reliable base load power and they emit zero carbon.

And the nukes will be there when the turbines are down, being maintained or replaced.

Given all of these negatives for renewable energies, why on earth would you continue to push for yet more of these renewable energy projects, when doing so will force poor families to spend more on this energy needs, costs tons of money per job created, cause more damage the environment, if not here, then certainly in China?
Mr. Pres., why in heavens name do you continue to attempt to fool around with the energy mix that were currently using? Have you learned nothing from other governments that try to control their economies with central planning, like the Soviet Union, Cuba, or North Korea?Our liquid fossil fuel supply has a great job of providing fuel for transportation needs which will always be with us.Slowly but surely, natural gas is displacing coal as a primary energy source for stationary power-plants, for economic, rather than ideological reasons. Rather than continuously push for more energy from renewable sources, why don’t you let the marketplace decide what new sources of energy will be suitable for most businesses and residential units. Rather than renewables, alternative energy forms include nuclear fusion (as discussed in this link), advanced nuclear fission technologies such as Small Modular Reactors (SMR), lithium fluoride thorium reactors,and Cold Fusion . Also, were you aware, Mr.Pres. that a new source of power has been developed, which although using natural gas or other kinds of flammable gas, can supply most of our home and business energy needs very efficiently and compactly without combustion. This product is currently being tested in several large businesses and is known as Bloom Energy’s fuel-cell. This fuel cell has proven to be much more efficientthan solar panels and wind farms,and has the potential to replace most of the electrical grid.If you were to adopt this philosophy, you would surely be a president for the people, but somehow I doubt your ideology would allow you to.

Dear Pres. Obama,
This recent research by Dr. Corrine Keet of John’s Hopkins Children’s Center is pretty clear in its results, having studied more than 23,000 children of various ethnic backgrounds and various living arrangements and socioeconomic factors. Here are the conclusions: Although the prevalence of asthma is high in some inner-city areas, this is largely explained by demographic factors and not by living in an urban neighborhood. “Our results highlight the changing face of pediatric asthma and suggest that living in an urban area is, by itself, not a risk factor for asthma,” lead author Keet, a pediatric allergy and asthma specialist at Johns Hopkins, said in the study. “Instead, we see that poverty and being African American or Puerto Rican are the most potent predictors of asthma risk.”

Similarly, the NERA Economic Consulting July 2014 report did not support the notion that lower ground-level ozone levels are worth the expense, saying “Employing our integrated energy-economic model (NewERA), we estimate that the potential emissions control costs would reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $270 billion per year on average over the period from 2017 through 2040 and by more than $3 trillion over that period in present value terms. The potential labor market impacts represent an average annual loss of 2.9 million job-equivalents. Employing our integrated energy-economic model (NewERA), we estimate that the potential emissions control costs would reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $270 billion per year on average over the period from 2017 through 2040 and by more than $3 trillion over that period in present value terms. The potential labor market impacts represent an average annual loss of 2.9 million job-equivalents.
This same NERA report gave EPA a tongue lashing, saying in summary“In particular, EPA needs to make a concerted effort to specify the full set of controls needed to achieve attainment of various ozone standards. A concerted effort is needed because currently EPA’s “known” controls represent only one-third of the estimated reductions needed to achieve a 60 ppb standard, with the remaining two-thirds consisting of unspecified (“unknown”) controls. Finally, need I remind you that Dr. Peter Valberg, Gradient Corporation principal, already testified on the US EPA’s Projections of Mortality Reduction Achieved by Reducing Levels of Particulate (PM-2.5) in Our Ambient Outdoor Air, and he found that “The dollar value of EPA’s calculated benefits is dominated by promised reductions in deaths that EPA assumes to be caused by Particular Matter (PM25) in our ambient air. Asthma is also monetized by the EPA as a ambient-air concern.”
Mr. Valberg, in his testimony, described EPA’s attempt to correlate changes in mortality with differences in Particular Matter (PM) as being fatally flawed. He finalizes by saying that the evidence doesn’t add up.(to support EPA’s attempt to lower the PM2.5 limits)

Here you are in Panama City, Panama, saying that for 50 years, our approach towards Cuba was not working, and it’s time for something new. Well Mr. Pres., for more than 100 years, the fossil fuel industry has been supplying America with all of its energy needs quite successfully, so why change that right now?

You must feeling pretty confident, now that the third-quarter results are in on the economy, and I can hear your Obamabots/Sycophants yelling loudly that this the best the economy has been in more than a decade. You yourself said as much, “When I took office, the deficit was nearly 10% of GDP, today it’s approaching 3%”,http://bit.ly/17ULtOr But the Tampa BayTimes PoliticalFact.com said the following “The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True. “ Other commentators were less charitable, for example, “When we say that the Bush record of economic growth was 1.7%, greater by a hair than Obama’s current 1.6%, we should also account for the fact that the predicate of the comparison is highly differential. Bush started from a high base and came in low. Obama started from a low base and came in worse. “, http://onforb.es/1zozZ1d , or this article by James Glassman, entitled “The Facts About Budget Deficits: How The Presidents Truly Rank”, http://onforb.es/1zoJ4ap . Mr. Glassman uses three sets of calculations for each president: first, the deficit-to-GDP ratio from the fiscal year he took office to the fiscal year he left minus one (thus, for Reagan: 1981-88); second, from his first fiscal year plus one to the fiscal year he left (thus, 1982-89); and third, an average of the first two. “Americans can judge for themselves whether deficits are “enormous”– but only if they have the facts. In this case, there is no denying the order in which the last five presidents rank on the basis of deficits: Clinton, Bush 43, Bush 41 and Reagan in a virtual tie, and Obama (meaning last). But even more critically speaking, you’ve been accused of creating a smoke and mirrors data dishonesty calculated and reported to made it look rosy, http://bit.ly/1ugSJym Mr. John Williams, the author of the newsletter, ShadowStats.com says that GDP numbers reported by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) “a statistical illusion created by using too-low a rate of inflation in deflating (removing inflation effects) from the GDP series.”Furthermore, Mr. Donald Lambro,even less charitable, when writing in the Washington Times, said that “Over the past six years, President Pinocchio has been given numerous admonitions from media fact-checkers for making patently false statements about his performance. He is still at it as he enters his seventh year in office, wildly exaggerating the impact of his actions by cherry-picking the good numbers and ignoring the bad ones.”Mr. Lambro went on to say “The truth is that wages over the course of Mr. Obama’s administration have been largely flat, job creation numbers were farbelow monthly rates during the recoveries of the 1990s and ‘80s under Presidents Clinton and Reagan. Annual economicgrowth rates remained weak.”… “Heading into the sixth year of this so-called recovery, the 140 million employmentpayroll count in November was up by a pathetic1.2 percent over the 138.4 million in January 2008….As for Mr. Obama’s boast that unemployment was down to 5.8 (a figure riddled with statistical fiction), that’s a long way from the 4.4 percent full-employment rate in May 2007….Others were underwhelmed. “It has been a slog,” says economist Robert J. Samuelson. “Generally, the numbers aren’t impressive.”

NOW FOR THE REAL REASON I AM CONTACTING YOU TODAY

I sure hope you’re NOT planning to create more destruction in our economy by imposing yet more of your environmental and climate change “solutions”, when we really don’t know how much of the global warming is due to human influence. For example, this article, “Global Warming? No, Natural, Predictable Climate Change”, http://onforb.es/1EhpNdL says that the earth has benefited from being in a natural warming cycle and that we are about to exit that warming cycle for a cold period or even an Ice Age. Also, this article also says the following “The Duke University/NASA JPL study estimates that as much as 0.3 degrees of warming from 1970 to 2000 may have been naturally induced by the 60-year modulation during the warming phase, amounting to at least 43-60% of the 0.5-0.7 degreesallegedly caused by human greenhouse emissions. “ Regarding this CO2 that seems so horrible to you, were you aware, Mr. President, that our nuclear-powered submarines have significantly higher levels of CO2 in their atmospheres than any outside air, “Data collected on nine nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 3,500 ppm with a range of 0-10,600 ppm, and data collected on 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines indicate an average CO2 concentration of 4,100 ppm with a range of 300-11,300 ppm (Hagar 2003). – page 46, http://bit.ly/13RpBRm , and commercial greenhouses are routinely “pumped-up” with approximately 1500 ppm of CO2 just to accelerate plant growth, or as this site says “Nope, it’s not a pollutant that threatens human civilization as has been ridiculously claimed by globalwarming doomsday pushers. CO2 actually increases plant yields, accelerates “re-greening” and improves reforestation of the planet. And while today’s atmosphere contains only 400 ppm of carbon dioxide, CO2 generators can help raise that level to 1500 ppm inside greenhouses, thereby accelerating plant growth and food production.” (emphasis already in the ad), http://bit.ly/1Ids6uY . So Mr. Pres., why do you continue to call CO2 “carbon”? as if carbon could float up into the air (being lighter than air apparently?).Even if you were worried about CO2, NOT CARBON levels in the atmosphere, these webpages describe how increases in temperature lead CO2 increases, not the other way around, (1) “Carbon Dioxide and Air Temperature: Who Leads and Who Follows? | Cornwall Alliance”, http://bit.ly/1rUVqEd , (2) “A study: The temperature rise has caused the CO2 Increase, not the other way around | Watts Up With That?”, http://bit.ly/14nII6X, and (3), in talking about the Infamous temperature and CO2 graph from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth movie says the following “…if the graphs are mapped onto each other instead of being counterposed one above the other, as Mr Gore does, …it becomes very clear that, very consistently, every temperature rise actually precedes the carbon [dioxide] rise by some 800 years. This undeniable time lag is critical since what it says is that more carbon in the air did not lead to global warming in times past. If so, factors other than carbon must have set off the various periods of global warming in times past,http://bit.ly/1By6bMR. “More importantly from a general climate issue, the following information derived from this webpage, “CO2 Science-The Pathetic Relationship Between Atmospheric CO2 and Earth’s Temperature Over the Past Sixty Million Years“, http://bit.ly/1xTK9GR , says “Starting 60 million years before present (BP), the authors have the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration at approximately 3600 ppm and the oxygen isotope ratio at about 0.3 per mil. Thirteen million yearslater, however, the air’s CO2 concentration has dropped all the way down to 500 ppm; but the oxygen isotope ratio has dropped (implying a rise in temperature) to zero, which is, of course, just the opposite of what one would expect from the “large and predictable effect” of CO2 on temperature that is commonly assumed.

Next comes a large spike in the air’s CO2 content, all the way up to a value of 2400 ppm. And what does the oxygen isotope ratio do? It rises slightly (implying temperature falls slightly) to about 0.4 per mil, which is again just the opposite of what one would expect from the “large and predictable effect” of CO2 on temperature that is commonly assumed.

After the spike in CO2, of course, the air’s CO2 concentration drops dramatically, declining to a minimum value of close to what it is today. And the oxygen isotope ratio? It barely changes at all, defying once again the common assumption of the “large and predictable effect” of CO2 on temperature.”(emphasis added)

Finally, in ancient times, CO2 was many times higher than it is today, and apparently nothing was wrong then. Please look at the CO2 versus temperature chart below,

As you can see, Sir, temperature and CO2 have absolutely no connection, as over time, both have fluctuated independently of the other.

Also, the right Rev. Forster’s Introduction to Peter Lee’s article, “Ethics and Climate Change Policy”, says it all; unless alarmists acknowledge that not all is known about climate change, and therefore we SHOULD NOT be pushing forward into heavy expenditures of funds for unknown benefit, without a broad consensus from the public. http://bit.ly/1AnFrPG , and Ifeel certain that you don’t have that consensus from the public, given just how weakly the public rates climate change among other national interest issues, “US Public Worried about ISIL, Putin– But Climate Change is Real Challenge | Informed Comment”, http://bit.ly/1xjWTVA .Mr. Pres., I think it is important for you to recognize that this article says that even among Democrats, only slightly more than a majority think Global Warming is a threat. Quoting from this article’s second paragraph referring to global warming., “In short, the US public is again being misled by its media and politicians as to the true shape of the world, and is likely to suffer pretty badly for this ignorance.”

“We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified…there are no indications that the warming is so severe that we need to panic.

‘The warming we have had the last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have had meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.’

The Earth appears to have cooling properties that exceeds the previous thought ones, and that computer models are inadequate to try to foretell a chaotic object like the climate, where actual observations is the only way to go. More and more we are seeing the alarmists being increasingly marginalized. As the data pours in, their science is looking more and more preposterous”, http://bit.ly/1IsVspa .

Let’s see what the IPCC warming model looks like when it is plotted as a cumulative bar graph:

The natural heating effect of carbon dioxide is the blue bars and the IPCC projected anthropogenic effect is the red bars. Each 20 ppm increment above 280 ppm provides about 0.03° C of naturally occurring warming and 0.43° C of anthropogenic warming. That is a multiplier effect of over thirteen times. This is the leap of faith required to believe in global warming.

The whole AGW belief system is based upon positive water vapour feedback starting from the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm and not before. To paraphrase George Orwell, anthropogenic carbon dioxide molecules are more equal than the naturally occurring ones. Much, much more equal.http://bit.ly/1tGuFPA

For the above climate “tipping point” to initiate, the atmosphere humidity has to absolutely increase, which the above chart of empirical evidence reveals it has not.

In fact, as seen, the atmospheric humidity is decreasing over time while CO2 levels increase – the exact opposite of all climate model and “consensus” expert predictions.” Extracted from: http://bit.ly/1tHUr5V

Sir,the second major issue I think you are likely to go wrong on is the proposed EPA ozone rules, http://1.usa.gov/1xExBTD . Not only has the state of Texas disagreed with these proposed rules, http://bit.ly/1xWL5bY , but Texas has strongly questioned the need for more stringent ozone standards, “We think that the EPA’s process of setting ozone standards has not scientifically proven this, and that further lowering of the ozone standard will fail to provide any measurable increase in human health protection.

The EPA’s own modeling in its Health Risk and Exposure Assessment (HREA) indicates that lowering ozone concentrations would actually result in more deaths in some cities (Appendix 7, page 7B-2 of the HREA). Either this indicates that lowering the ozone standard defeats its stated purpose of protecting human health, or it indicates that something is wrong with the EPA’s interpretation of the data. Either way, it’s not a good argument for lowering the ozone standard.”, http://bit.ly/1DKWCf5 .

Texas is not the only state to disagree with EPA rules regarding ozone, as New Jersey sent a letter to Ms. McCarthy, the head of the EPA, opposing adoption of the EPA’s Proposed Rule on Carbon Pollution Emissions for existing stationary sources, http://bit.ly/1tUkd76 . Also, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity produced a document showing the Six Major Myths About EPA Proposal Carbon Regulations, http://bit.ly/1AZX5ul . This not the first time that Congress has heard nonsensical things regarding this program, as in 2011, Mr. Peter Valberg, a principal in Gradient Corporation, testified, http://1.usa.gov/1BRnU3V that EPA’s analysis on air pollution standards for ozone and asthma were inaccurate. Mr. Valberg specifically called into question the data presented by EPA and said that the EPA could not justify the lives saved from asthma and hospitalizations by their numbers. Please have your science adviser read this article and direct the EPA to straighten up and fly right, and quit making up stuff! If you think that the EPA is correct in what they’re doing, please read Mr. Valberg’s bio, http://bit.ly/1IBbvS1 . Personally, I would think twice about challenging his knowledge/expertise.

I thought you were the President who was going to restore Science to the decision-making process. Well sir, based on this discussion as well as your views on Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW), I don’t think you have learned how to ask hard questions of any of your staff, or you’re (as we used to say in the Navy).striking for, a full membership in the Club of Rome’s “The Green Agenda”, http://bit.ly/1y1cIRq .

The third thing I think you’re making a mistake on is planning to veto legislation which would authorize construction of the XL pipeline, H.R. 3, the Keystone XL pipeline Act, http://1.usa.gov/1yaGBOM. The State Department has already blessed this project, and there is virtually no environmental emissions. More importantly, these Tar Sands will be sold to someone, most likely China, if we don’t build the Keystone Pipeline and refine the product ourselves. Mr. Pres., whom would you trust to do it better than the US, with fewer emissions?

Finely, the fourth area of concern is your attempt to control methane gases in the oil and gas industry. Quoting from an article on this, http://bit.ly/1DPeRTe “Methane is the second biggest driver of climate change, after carbon dioxide. On a 20-year timescale, it is 87 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas. (emphasis added) Well, Mr. Pres., do you recognize that the entire greenhouse gas issue is blown out of proportion to its relationship on climate. This webpage will show you how little greenhouse gases effects climate, “Just how much of the “Greenhouse Effect” is caused by human activity?It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account– about 5.53%, if not.”, http://bit.ly/1g4uy9Z Those are some awfully small contributions toward global warming,and maybe not worth pursuing, given the destruction to the economy it would cause to do so.

In summation, perhaps most importantly of all, as the world’s leader in democracy, if you force these kind of policies on Third World nations, you are subjugating them to a future of nondevelopment, and being permanently underclass.

I thought you would be more interested in seeing your fellow man improve his lot, but apparently not.

Dear Pres. Obama,The latest peer-reviewed evidence from so-called deniers on global warming, shows that the IPCC has grossly overestimated the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere, and therefore no more than approximately 1° of heat will be gained during the next century. Please give up your attempt to modify the climate, as we have little bearing on such a complex system, and all you’re doing is wasting money on a fruitless fallacy.